FUNDAMENTALISM AND STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT: A CONCEPTUAL SYNTHESIS AND DISCUSSION OF IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGIOUS

Thesis submitted by Raoul J. ADAM BEd (Hons) QUT in September 2003

For the degree of Master of Education (Hons) in the School of Education James Cook

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STATEMENT OF SOURCES

DECLARATION

I declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted in any form for another degree or diploma at any university or other institution of . derived from the published or unpublished work of others has been acknowledged in the text and a list of references is given.

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ABSTRACT

This thesis examines religious in light of structural- developmental theory. Reciprocally, it provides a critique of the structural- developmental approach in light of its application to religious fundamentalism. The product is a conceptual synthesis between observed fundamentalist characteristics and the evolving tradition of developmentalism. The findings of this conceptual synthesis are used to generate principles for developmentally sensitive . The thesis focusses on Protestant Christian Fundamentalism while utilising illustrative examples from diverse traditions described in current literature as fundamentalist.

This conceptual synthesis adopts a historical-chronological approach to developmentalism in order to reflect the historical context of the current debate between the associated discourses of both . This historical- chronological approach to developmentalism enables a more explicit critical analysis of the implicit assumptions of the modern discourse. The conceptual synthesis culminates with an interpretation of religious fundamentalism in light of James Fowler's Seven Aspects of Faith.

The thesis provides a conceptual synthesis between fundamentalism and structural development. It does not purport to offer a definitive empirical testing of this theory at this stage. It uses existing empirical evidence of development to analyse descriptions of fundamentalism in current literature.

The used to mediate the reciprocal analysis of fundamentalism and structural-development is based on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (1989). This methodological approach offers tools and terminology for the examination of fundamentalism and developmentalism as discourses while offering a structuralist reference for value judgments implicit in the analysis and discussion of implications for religious education.

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Findings revealed general congruency between early developmental structures and elements of fundamentalism. The contents and dynamics of fundamentalism resist the development of later stage structures. Hence, ontogenetic development is affected by the phylogenetic structure of the fundamentalist discourse; cultures can reflect stage-specific structuring tendencies and therefore affect individual development. Stage crises and transitions provide a powerful interpretive model for the dynamics of interaction between fundamentalism and other discourses. The analysis revealed the potential for a form of recapitulated fundamentalism prompted by dissonance between convergent and emerging divergent epistemologies of later development. This suggests that purely content-based assessments of fundamentalism may not account for its developmental range.

The recapitulation of fundamentalism and its appearance in phylogenetic forms challenges traditional developmental assumptions concerning stage progression. It provides a rationale for further investigation of the structuring powers of contents within the developmental discourse. This investigation necessitates the integration of concepts including compartmentalisation, cognitive dissonance and consonance into the structural developmental model.

The thesis offers a theoretical defense of facilitated development beyond fundamentalism as a structural developmental representation. It proposes broad principles for the facilitation of such development in the context of schooled religious education. These principles of a developmentally sensitive religious education are holistic, dynamic, progressive, experiential, interpersonal, intrapersonal, meta-contextual, objectified and critically reflective.

Key Words Faith, , , Discourse, Education, , Fundamentalism, Liberalism, Structural Developmental Psychology, Stages of Faith. Key Authors Kant, Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, Oser, Gmünder, Fowler, Geisler, Schaeffer, LaHaye, McDowell, Rushdoony, Newbigin, Spong, Tillich, Marsden, Barr, Marty and Appleby, Armstrong, Winell, Vogt, Babinski, Strozier, Cohen, Shinn.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF ACCESS……………………………… ii STATEMENT OF SOURCES – ELECTRONIC COPY. iii STATEMENT OF SOURCES DECLARATION……….. iv ABSTRACT……………………………………………….. v

1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale…………………………………………………. 1 1.2 General Objectives……………………………………… 10 1.3 Thesis Outline………………………………………….… 13 1.4 Methodological Approach………………………………. 16 1.5 Position Statement………………………………………. 18

2 CONCEPTUAL SYNTHESIS 2.1 Structural Development: A Critique of an Evolving Discourse in Light of Fundamentalist .

2.1.1 Structural Development: Epistemological Foundations and ………………………. 26 2.1.2 Stage Theories: Freud and Piaget………………………35 2.1.3 Moral Development: Kohlberg………………………….. 52 2.1.4 Psychosocial Development: Erikson…………………… 59 2.1.5 Religious Development: Oser & Gmünder……………. 62 2.1.6 Faith Development: Fowler……………………………… 81 2.1.7 Conclusion…………………………………………………107

2.2 Approaches to Fundamentalism: The Value and Application of a Structuralist Approach. 2.2.1 Defining Fundamentalism………………………………. 108 2.2.2 Apologetic Approaches to Fundamentalism………….. 113 2.2.3 Ex-Apologetic and Liberal Approaches to Fundamentalism…………………………………………. 138

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2.2.4 Protestant Socio-Historical Approaches to Fundamentalism…………………………………………. 157 2.2.5 Multi-Religious Approaches to Fundamentalism……… 161 2.2.6 Epistemological Approaches to Fundamentalism…… 164 2.2.7 Hermeneutic Approaches to Fundamentalism…………167 2.2.8 Psychological Approaches to Fundamentalism………. 169 2.2.9 Developmental Approaches to Fundamentalism…….. 182 2.2.10 Conclusion………………………………………………… 184

2.3 Fowler’s Aspects of Faith and Fundamentalism 2.3.1 Introduction………………………………………………. 185 2.3.2 Fundamentalism and Form of …………………… 187 2.3.3 Fundamentalism and Locus of Authority……………… 199 2.3.4 Fundamentalism and Social Awareness and Perspective Taking………………………………… 203 2.3.5 Fundamentalism and World Coherence………………. 208 2.3.6 Fundamentalism and Symbolic Function……………… 212 2.3.7 Fundamentalism and Moral Judgment………………… 221 2.3.8 Fundamentalism as Arrested Development…………… 225 2.3.9 Conclusion…………………………………………………231

3 DISCUSSION 3.1 Religious Education and Developmental Sensitivity…. 232

4. CONCLUSION 4.1 Summary of Findings……………………………………. 245 4.2 Further Research……………………………………….. 248 4.3 Conclusion……………………………………………….. 250

REFERENCES…………………………………………….252

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1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

Identifying a gap in the research

This rationale identifies a gap in the research dialogue concerning fundamentalism and religious education. This thesis seeks to fill the gap with the application of a structural developmental discourse to fundamentalism. Several developmental models are applied to fundamentalism throughout the synthesis culminating in the application of James Fowler's Aspects of Faith. Though Fowler does not mention fundamentalism in Stages of Faith (1981) he does predict such an analysis: The formal structural characteristics of faith stages can be employed, I contend, to test the normative structuring tendencies of a given content tradition. They can also be employed to evaluate a given faith community's particular appropriation of the content-structural vision of its tradition. (302) As such, the purpose of this thesis is twofold; first, to examine fundamentalism as an expression of structural development and, second, to discuss the content- structural implications for religious education in light of the first application.

The conceptual synthesis will seek to reveal a gap in approaches to fundamentalism that exists between the disciplinary poles of psychology and sociology. This gap is noticed, though left unfilled and vaguely defined, by existing commentators on fundamentalism. Structural developmentalist James Fowler, acknowledges a gap in his own research: It is true, however, that in trying to construct these empirically founded descriptions of structural stages in faith I and my associates neglected, until very recently, any effort at a theoretical account of the interplay of structure and content in the of faith. (1981:273) Similarly, James Barr author of the definitive Fundamentalism (1981) indicates (in hindsight to the first edition of his book) acceptance of the possibility for more collaboration between doctrinal and psychological approaches to

fundamentalism: My reason for avoiding the psychological argument was, first of all, a reluctance to accept that any doctrinal position could be explained simply as a consequence of psychological conditions; and secondly, the observation that those who experience an evangelical conversion are often free and open people, both in themselves and in the first stages after their conversion, and that it is the increasing involvement in fundamentalist and in the life of a fundamentalist society that produces the marked psychological characteristics which so many have noted. Thus I have thought that the people concerned were not inherently this way; rather, fundamentalist doctrine and life made them so. (xii) Here, Barr does not account for the place of content in a psychological approach to fundamentalism. He separates psychology and cultural contextual approaches, choosing the latter. However, the developmental approach bridges the gap that Barr has legitimately identified. It is an approach that observes and allows for an interaction between psychological predisposition and the effects of particular socialisation and indoctrination. Barr continues: However lacking as I do any deep knowledge of psychology, I feel I have to hesitate in this, when so many experienced observers see it otherwise; and perhaps on deeper investigation it would turn out that the doctrinal and the psychological accounts of fundamentalism are not as fully in contrast as I have supposed. (xii) Other authors on fundamentalism have also noted the possible synthesis of psychological and cultural-content based approaches.

Marty and Appleby, editors of The Fundamentalism Project (1991), containing primarily descriptive accounts of religious , note the possible existence of a fundamentalist mentality: The present point in adducing the term [religious] is to suggest that while there may be such a thing as a "fundamentalist mentality" which finds its expression in various ideological or scientific forms, here the prime interest has to do with fundamentalisms in which the religious dimension is foremost (1991:vii) This thesis utilises the developmental approach as a discourse that is inclusive of religious and psychological dimensions.

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The synthesis of fundamentalism and structural development is intimated, though not rigorously pursued in two sources known to the author. Marlene Winell identifies developmental change as a reason for leaving fundamentalism (1993) and quotes a second source - Robert Shinn. Shinn's brief eight-page article Fundamentalism as a Case of Arrested Development (1984) makes the tentative connection between fundamentalism and development that this thesis seeks to explore in detail. As such, this thesis forwards the developmental discourse, both as a place for the synthesis of existing disciplines and as an area of new insight.

The application of the structural developmental discourse is warranted by the nature and extent of fundamentalism as a pervading, multidisciplinary discourse. Fundamentalism seemed an appropriate subject for an interdisciplinary public policy study in part because it inspires the effort to create structures and institutions comprehending every aspect of human existence...Accordingly, economists, social theorists, political scientists, cultural historians, anthropologists, legal scholars, and social psychologists must collaborate if the phenomena is to be analyzed in all of its dimensions. (Marty & Appleby, 1991:815) This tendency of fundamentalism to involve itself as a total in all aspects of human existence also provides a rationale for the later educational discussion in this thesis. The implications of a developmental theory of fundamentalism are particularly pertinent to the institution of schooling and the theory and praxis of . Formative structures and contents are most deliberately brought together within such environments. Schools are powerful environments because of this union. Consequently, developmentally sensitive religious education is of paramount importance.

Oser and Gmünder (1991) anticipate the synthesis within this thesis in the context of religious education: If wants to unearth the possibilities for future faith education, it cannot limit itself to advancing abstract speculative arguments...Rather it becomes necessary to do theology decisively from the perspective of structural

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development, even if the distinction between phylogenetics and ontogenetics...must be clarified further with new and progressive research. (153) Fundamentalism represents such a phylogenetic phenomenon. The mechanisms of ontogenetic development provide powerful tools for understanding the interaction between individual structuring tendencies and the reflective structures of phylogenetic movements such as fundamentalism.

The concept of education for developmental facilitation assumes that stage arrest is a common occurrence. Oser and Gmünder note: …movement from one structural developmental stage to another is not automatic or inevitable...One can "arrest" or equilibrate in one of Piaget or Kohlberg's intermediate stages. (1991:50) The concept of developmental arrest has been given little attention in developmental literature. Fundamentalism is a powerful field of study for the concept of arrest because it maintains equilibrium with demonstrably effective mechanisms. As such, this thesis explores the mechanisms of arrest in fundamentalism to enlighten the broader concept of phylogenetic structures and their role in facilitating developmentally sensitive education.

A theoretical approach From the outset, it is important to state that this thesis is primarily a theoretical synthesis rather than a gathering of empirical data. A developmental theory of fundamentalism must seek to derive structuring tendencies from reliable descriptions of fundamentalism. Such descriptions must come from inside and outside of the discourse. The observations most enlightening to the developmental theory are perhaps those provided by former fundamentalists.

While there are many theoretical approaches to fundamentalism, there are few attempts to apply a developmental discourse. An equally important objective of this thesis is to critique developmental theory as a heuristic tool. Does the study of fundamentalism raise theoretical complications for the developmental discourse? Are there subtle prejudices in the developmental tradition that disqualify its objectively detached application to fundamentalism? The 4

theoretical approach must be examined in light of its own tradition. The empirical burden of proof lies with existing developmental data as utilised in the literature of Chapter Two, Conceptual Synthesis.

The socio-religious context of a synthesis This thesis, as any, is a response to a particular socio-cultural context. As author, I participate in many levels of societal discourse: As an educator, I observe and appreciate the psychological, developmental, and social power of school-specific discourses. As a participant in fundamentalist, evangelical, liberal, and postmodern discourses, I observe and appreciate the dimensions and dynamics of the religious-secular divide. As a citizen of a nation that foregrounds the discourse of , I observe the theory and praxis of its implementation. As a spectator to mass media representations of a current conflict between fundamentalist and the democratic West, I observe a lack of psychosocial investigation of the same. Hence, I locate this thesis at the intersection of my own discourses. What follows, is a brief elaboration of this socio-religious context as a rationale for the thesis topic.

It is a tentative observation but one worth noting nonetheless, that the fundamentalist-liberal-secular rift is a manifestation of a crisis in religious- secular epistemology. This crisis is not new but its intensity seems heightened by the popularisation of poststructuralist theory and religious in response to increasing religious diversity in .

Demographic analysis reveals this diversification of religious affiliation in Australia. Carey (1996) reports in Believing in Australia that, "there seems little doubt that the decline in adherence [to major Christian denominations] evident from the census returns reflects a real change in the pattern of religious belief" (114). According to the 1991 census 74% of Australians stated their as Christian as opposed to 96% in the first national census of 1911 (Healey, 1998:1). The number of census respondents reporting a non-Christian religion doubled in the period between the 1981 and 1991 census returns (Carey, 142).

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There are several reasons for such a perceived decline in Christian affiliation, including immigration trends and changes to the census itself. However, these factors are themselves indications of Australia's developing social policy to accommodate ethnic and consequently religious diversification. Australia's politically promoted multicultural identity is indicative of this increasingly .

The Christian Church in Australia has responded to and been affected by, such pluralism. In the period between 1901 and 1991, adherence to Anglican and Mainline Protestant churches steadily decreased while adherence to Catholicism slightly increased (Carey, 1996:114-115). Pentecostals, Protestant evangelicals, Mormons, Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses have all continued to increase in affiliation since the 1970s (Carey:193-195). Fundamentalisms are increasing in paradoxical proportion to pluralism. A mark of such smaller but growing groups is the internal coherence of their . Carey argues that this internal coherence "has a particular attraction for many Australians in post-modern times" (195). Such internal coherence is a mark of fundamentalism. It is often facilitated through a form of strict Biblical literalism. This literalism manifests itself in, or is at least related to, the social attitudes of fundamentalist belief.

The Life Survey reveals a strong link between the Biblical views and social attitudes of Australian . The denominations with a predominantly literalist view of the Bible differ consistently with denominations with a predominantly contextualist or valuist view of the Bible in almost all aspects of the survey. These aspects include attitudes toward euthanasia, alcohol, Aboriginal people, sex, remarriage, migrant intake, the nature of , evolution, and divine judgment. Anglican and Uniting Churches tend to be the most socially and theologically liberal while Baptist and Pentecostal churches tend to be the most socially and theologically conservative (Kaldor & Powell, 1995). The social pervasiveness of religious mentalities provides a rationale for the synthesis between fundamentalism and development and the subsequent discussion of implications for religious education.

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As Kaldor and Powell note, the views of the Bible (literalist, contextualist, valuist) of such churches are manifest in the education choices of their adherents: While the sample is too small for detailed denominational analysis, some relevant trends emerge. While 5% to 8% of attenders in the Anglican and Uniting Church have children in independent Christian schools, 22% of Assemblies of God attenders and 26% of Baptist attenders do so (1995: 108). Kaldor goes on to acknowledge the link between those adherents with a literalist view of the Bible and Christian schooling; noting that literalists are, "twice as likely to enrol their children in an independent Christian school (33% vs. 16% overall) (108). He concludes, "the decision to enrol children in an independent Christian school appears to be related to both faith type and denominational context" (108). The establishment of such schools reflects a perceived gap between Biblical literalism and secular postmodern theory. This religious dichotomy contributes to and reflects in turn, a secular conservative - liberal divide. It is both a contention of, and rationale for this thesis, that the developmental discourse provides a powerful interpretive model for this divide.

There are several manifestations of the epistemological debate between fundamentalism and conservativism (though these are not synonymous), and poststructuralism in education in the nation's popular psyche. For some, the ideological debate has been simplified to traditional values versus new fangled ideas. It is the good old days of the Three Rs versus the inclusive and inverted curriculum. It is back to the basics versus individualised education. It is what to think versus how to think.

Such simplified dichotomised approaches to education are resurfacing as school syllabus documents begin to reflect a postmodern epistemological approach. Public speculation about the philosophical foundations of the Queensland SOSE (Study of Society and the Environment) Syllabus (2000) and the Senior English Syllabus (2002) has been evidenced in the popular press in recent years. Australian education is perhaps beginning to encounter the religious-legal conflicts evident in the . The establishment of 7

independent fundamentalist schools is perhaps in part, a reaction to the increasingly postmodern philosophical foundations of public schooling. This thesis provides a perspective on this perceived dichotomy.

Recently, the dichotomy has been intensified as a reaction to recent debate concerning state funding of independent schools. While this debate is presented predominantly as a socio-economic debate, religious-secular epistemological division between independent Christian and traditional Church schools and state schools is a foundational issue. The magnitude and consequences of this epistemological division, as perceived by fundamentalists, is evidenced in The Cause of Christian Education (1999) by the current principal of the National Institute for Christian , Dr. Richard Edlin. Referring to Christian parents with children in public education Edlin states: If these parents thought for a moment that they were deliberately immersing their tender children into an irresistible cauldron of systematic antipathy to Christianity that would have eternal consequences, they would protectively withdraw them from that detrimental environment without a moment's hesitation. It's the assumption or assertion that public school education doesn't deliberately lead their children away from God that enables many Christian parents to keep their children there. The frightful tragedy is that the claim that education is religiously neutral is a of gigantic proportions. It's a lie that has the most fearful implications for generations of Christians and their children. (42) These are sentiments that Edlin equally applies to liberal Christian education. As principal speaker at the 1999 Young Leader's Conference involving young teachers from Christian Parent Controlled Schools around Australia Dr. Edlin stated that there is “no such thing as a liberal Christian” and that “anyone outside the beliefs of the orthodox creeds is not a true Christian”. The epistemological marks of religious affiliation and allegiance are clear and vital for the fundamentalist. This thesis attempts to engage these questions of epistemology as encounters between ontogenetic and phylogenetic development.

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Polemic or Defence? This thesis offers neither against, nor defence of fundamentalism. It is an attempt to understand it developmentally while using it to highlight strengths and deficiencies in the structural developmental discourse. In hindsight, this means to affirm the continuing importance of structures that give rise to fundamentalism while holding up to criticism those practices that arrest the developmental process.

The words of theologian Williams Adam Brown in The of Christianity (In Reardon, 1968:61) though somewhat rhetorical provide guiding sentiment for this thesis: The attempt to destroy dogmatic Christianity is giving place to the more fruitful attempt to understand it. We must see the good which it contains as well as the evil, and recognise that in this development of Christian thought even those parts which seem to us less honourable have a necessary part to play...What is needed is not denunciation, but insight; not polemic but sympathy. This thesis is an attempt to postulate a developmental understanding of the structural foundations of fundamentalism. The subjects of criticism and judgment will be those characteristics of fundamentalism that hinder rather than facilitate this development.

Summarily, this rationale has identified a gap in research that this thesis attempts to fill. The gap exists in the lack of synthesis between ontogenetic structural development and fundamentalism as a phylogenetic discourse. The thesis was identified as primarily theoretical. Finally, the synthesis was located in the socio-educational context in which it was formulated. The destructiveness and divisiveness of the fundamentalist-liberal-secular divide, a void of conciliatory dialogue, and the descriptive power of the structural developmental model provide the primary rationale for this thesis. The following objectives focus and organise the conceptual synthesis of fundamentalism and structural developmental theory.

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1.2 General Objectives

The encompassing objective of this study is to synthesise or correlate the discourses of fundamentalism and structural-developmental psychology (Figure 1) Both discourses make claims of universality. A synthesis helps to define each discourse and reveal its descriptive strengths and weaknesses. The application of Socratic and rational analysis helps to expose paradigmatic weakness by revealing exceptions to the rules of each discourse and forcing redefinition. Similarly, the encompassing objective of the study is to reveal the descriptive power of each discourse. The objective of Chapter Three, is to apply the insights of analysis to the practical implementation of religious education.

The discourse analysis of structural-developmental psychology and fundamentalism has several objectives. Firstly, the study of fundamentalism provides the opportunity to reflect on the appropriateness of the metaphor of development. Secondly, fundamentalism raises important questions concerning the structuring power of contents often overlooked in the developmental discourse’s traditional emphasis on universal psychological tendencies. Thirdly, fundamentalism provides powerful examples of the tension between stage transition and equilibration as key concepts of the structural-developmental model. Similarly, it serves to reveal the moral foundations and epistemological assumptions of development by providing an example of the psycho-social effects of a developmental equilibrium sustained by socio-cultural contents. Fundamentalism’s indirect rejection of developmentalism’s structuralist assumptions helps to reveal the epistemological traditions and biases of both discourses. The exploration of these concerns form key objectives for this study.

The synthesis raises broader social and psychological questions for the concepts of faith and religion in postmodern societies. The exploration of these questions likewise, forms the objectives of this thesis. Are fundamentalism and structural-developmentalism compatible? Is religion accommodated or assimilated by postmodernism? Can developmentalism provide a structuralist

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response to postmodern critiques? These questions are focussed clearly through James Fowler’s Stages and Aspects of Faith. Collectively they aid the pursuit of the encompassing objectives of this study.

A broad objective of the synthesis between fundamentalism and developmentalism is to add to the definition of both discourses. The developmental discourse can be further defined and refined by comparing it with other theoretical approaches to fundamentalism. This analysis and fundamentalism’s response helps to define the dimensions, dynamics and contents of the fundamentalist discourse. This objective is approached throughout Chapter Two, culminating with the specific application of Fowler’s Aspects of Faith to examine the compatibility of developmental and fundamentalist dynamics.

This conceptualisation of fundamentalism as a representation of developmental stages raises objective questions central to this study. Can fundamentalism be conceived as representing concrete developmental structures of the aspects of faith? Can fundamentalism be conceived as representing formal developmental structures of the aspects of faith? Do fundamentalisms and liberalisms represent incremental stages of normal development? What contributions can a developmental approach make to the nature of dialogue and debate concerning fundamentalism?

The final objectives of this study concern the application of the results of the analysis to the principles and praxis of religious education. The practice of religious education is a real space-time interface between fundamentalism and developmental theory. There are two objective questions guiding this discussion. What are the implications of a structural developmental perspective of fundamentalism for religious education? How might such factors affect the construction and devolution of school ethos and pedagogy? The Thesis Outline to follow identifies the structure of the thesis in its qualitative approach to these objectives.

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Figure 1. General Objectives: Diagrammatic Representation

Objective Question: Do the dynamics and contents of religious fundamentalisms characterise particular stage structures of development?

DISCOURSES OF

STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT

1

Formal

4 operational stages

DISCOURSES OF Concrete RELIGIOUS 3 operational FUNDAMENTALISM stages

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2

Preoperational stage

Objective Sub-Questions.

1. Can religious fundamentalism structurally represent the highest stages of operations? 1.1 If not, how viable are faith and religion-based extrapolations of developmental theory? 2. Do religious fundamentalisms structurally represent earlier concrete stages of operations? 3. If so, what elements of the fundamentalist discourse inhibit or arrest development to later stages? 4. How does the fundamentalist discourse relate to (by subordination, compartmentalisation, or permeation) other discourses engaged in by an individual? 5. How does fundamentalism respond to a developmentalist critique? 5.1 Can developmentalism be embraced within fundamentalism?

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1.3 Thesis Outline

This introductory chapter has served to provide a rationale for the thesis and some clear, though general objectives for the synthesis between structural development and fundamentalism. The following outline describes the organisational approach for the achievement of these objectives.

The next section of this introductory chapter will provide a brief overview and rationale for the methodological approach of the thesis synthesis. The final section of the introductory chapter will be devoted to a position statement concerning the value judgments assumed by the use of a developmental discourse for an analysis of fundamentalism. The position statement will include a meta-narrative discussion of the topic and a summary autobiographical reflection. The former will establish a premise for the latter. This premise is briefly, that the initial relationship between developmental theory and fundamentalism was conceived from the author's own experience of a fundamentalist worldview, deconversion and concurrent exposure to a developmental discourse. It is reasoned that research born out of such experience may be as legitimate or as illegitimate as the author's attempts to actively locate it in the context of his own relativity. To fail to acknowledge the existential influences of authorship is to fail to research thoroughly. Therefore, the Position Statement is an important attempt to provide a tone for the thesis and make overt its inevitable value judgments of fundamentalism and the structural developmental approach.

Chapter Two, Conceptual Synthesis, engages the primary concepts and discourses to be synthesised. The synthesis is divided into three sections. The first section (2.1.1-2.1.7) provides a chronological and epistemological analysis of the structural developmental discourse in light of the qualitative religious nature of fundamentalism. It traces the evolution of the developmental discourse in order to establish its essential epistemological, theoretical, and empirical foundations. These foundations are critiqued in light of fundamentalist and postmodernist positions. To achieve this and the aforementioned

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objectives, it systematically and chronologically reviews relevant theorists of the developmental tradition. It culminates with a review and analysis of the developmental model deemed most directly applicable to fundamentalism - Fowler's Stages and Seven Aspects of Faith.

The chronological-historical approach to the structural-developmental discourse is seen as a necessary organisational tool for the achievement of the study’s objectives. Firstly, it acknowledges the centrality of historical context and tradition to the nature of the two modern discourses (fundamentalism and developmentalism) and the debate and dialogue between them. Secondly, concepts, contents and issues that are the subtle assumptions of a modern discourse may be best revealed and examined by revisiting the historical context of their genesis. For example, if examining the incongruity between fundamentalist conceptualisations of morality and Fowler’s aspect of moral judgment, it makes sense to trace Fowler’s assumptions about moral development to Kohlberg’s original work in order to focus and clarify the issues. The historical-chronological approach therefore provides more clarity of analysis and a necessary acknowledgement of the indebtedness and continuity of the modern developmental discourse. It respects the nature of fundamentalist objections to the developmental discourse while reflecting the development and evolution of developmentalism itself.

The second section (2.2.1-2.2.10) of Chapter Two reviews and analyses existing analytical approaches to fundamentalism. It begins with a brief discussion of the problem of definition. It is structured thematically throughout the rest of the conceptual synthesis. These thematic approaches to fundamentalism are reviewed in the following order: apologetic, ex-apologetic and liberal, socio-historical, multi-religious, epistemological, hermeneutic, psychological (including psycho-pathological and psycho-apocalyptic approaches), and developmental.

The examination of other approaches to fundamentalism in light of the developmental approach is seen as a necessary inclusion for the fulfillment of

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the study’s objectives. It adds to the critique of the developmental approach by challenging its relative emphases and possible oversights. It also serves to reinforce the descriptive strength of the developmental model where other models fail to accommodate the criticisms of fundamentalism. Finally, the analysis of other approaches to fundamentalism acknowledges the breadth of debate and the need for a more inclusive dialogue acknowledging the range of interested discourses.

The final developmental literature for review focusses on an article by Robert Shinn - Fundamentalism as a Case of Arrested Development (1984). It is the only literature known by the author to make a deliberate connection between fundamentalism and developmental theory. A brief article (8 pages), it serves to highlight some of the issues and objectives that this study explores in detail.

The third and final section (2.3.1-2.3.9) of Chapter Two provides an original analysis of fundamentalism using developmentalist, James Fowler’s, Aspects of Faith. Each of Fowler's aspects is applied to the concept of fundamentalism as described in the conceptual synthesis. The application is the culmination of the analysis of developmental theory and fundamentalism.

Chapter Three, Discussion, relates the theoretical insights of the synthesis between structural development and fundamentalism to religious education. This section generates principles from the previous synthesis for a developmentally sensitive approach to religious education.

Chapter Four, Conclusions, summarises findings in relation to the general objectives posed at the beginning of the thesis. This section is followed by a brief discussion of further research. It ends with a conclusion reflecting on the thesis process.

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1.4 Methodological Approach

The methodological approach adopted for the analysis is based the principles of Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (1989,1992,1995,2001) and of discourse analysis in general. The conceptual tools and terminology of discourse analysis are used to mediate the synthesis between fundamentalism and developmentalism (Figure 2). Thus, the methodology for the conceptual synthesis is threefold: firstly, fundamentalism is used to analyse developmentalism; secondly, developmentalism is used to analyse fundamentalism; and thirdly, discourse analysis is used to interpret the synthesis and inform the conclusions and discussion of the implications for religious education.

This methodology will be implicit in the analysis. It is recognised by the use of key concepts including discourse, positioning, marginalisation, representation, construction, and . As a methodology, critical discourse analysis provides tools to examine: • activities and techniques in discursive practices • meanings in systems of knowledge and beliefs • social relationships among people • subjectivity and identities for people (Gilbert, 1999). It is primarily for these reasons that discourse analysis was seen as an applicable, flexible methodology for the thesis analysis.

Inevitably and inescapably, Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis is itself, a discourse. As a structuralist discourse it is more sympathetic to developmentalism, than to fundamentalism. This methodological approach reflects in part, the value judgments implicit in the findings and later discussion of the implications for religious education. The final section of this introductory chapter offers an explicit position statement to firmly state and locate these assumptions and value judgments.

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Figure 2.

Methodological Approach: A Diagrammatic Representation

Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1989)

Religious Structural- Fundamentalism Developmentalism

• The tools and assumptions of Discourse Analysis provide a mediating discourse for the synthesis of fundamentalism and developmentalism and a foundation for conclusions and recommendations.

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1.5 Position Statement

It is important to make explicit the often tacit assumptions and positions of the thesis body. Tone and register, so often hidden in the subtle selection and omission of words, often implies judgment on the concept and topics under analysis.

My positions and opinions as researcher have been subject to inevitable change over five years of research and writing. This is hopefully a sign that the thesis was not a preconceived and foregone conclusion – research used to prove what I believed a priori to be true. The following position statements are written in hindsight to the research process. (a) Fundamentalism is the observable product of interaction between religious contents and stage specific structuring tendencies. (b) The social contents of fundamentalisms usually construct total and meta-narratives. (c) The contents and social dynamics of fundamentalisms perpetuate stage equilibrium and arrest the development of late stage structures within a compartmentalised domain. (d) Fundamentalisms representing convergent structures may be recapitulated in rejection of the uncertainties of divergent epistemologies of later stages. (e) Fundamentalism reveals the need for a more detailed developmental account of the structuring power of contents. (f) Fundamentalism reveals the need for a more detailed developmental account of stage transition, compartmentalisation, and conscious regression. (g) The study of fundamentalism challenges popular understandings of the metaphor of development. (h) The synthesis of fundamentalism and structural development provides insights and principles for the formulation of developmentally sensitive

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religious education.

At this stage, it is necessary to address the term development, for the use of this term positions the fundamentalism to which it is applied. The particulars of structural developmental psychology will be discussed and analysed early in the next chapter. However, the very term development carries connotations that are important to examine here.

Fundamentalism and the metaphor of development

The etymological union of fundamentalism and development is understandably controversial. The metaphor of development can connote change from inferior to superior, least to most, last to first, with all the value-laden implications of usage in an economic context (Rossiter, 1988). The association of fundamentalism with a particular stage of psychosocial development is bound to be controversial so long as the metaphor of development shares a value laden economic context. Therefore, it is important from the outset to remythologise and specify the metaphor of development before applying it to fundamentalism.

It is not useful to perceive the early and late stages of development as inferior and superior respectively. Divergent, abstract thinking does not surpass convergent, concrete thinking. The concrete and convergent psychology of fundamentalism necessarily precedes the divergence and abstractions of later stages. One cannot abstract unless one has something concrete to abstract. The risk of using the metaphor of development is exposure to the connotations of succession, inferiority and superiority - the new rejecting, rather than reconstructing the old.

Development is a cumulative process - stages are incremental. Each stage builds on the foundation of the last, just as new abilities require previous skills. Development is incremental and holistic. To pose a metaphorical question of development - which rungs on a ladder are the most important? There is a

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danger of fundamentalism inhibiting further development but there is also a danger of a later stage discourse cutting the ground from under its feet.

The epistemological studies of Cobern (1996), and Burbules and Linn (1991) reveal diversity in the types of epistemologies valued and used in different situations by adolescent individuals. It is a position of this thesis that the emergence of new epistemologies does not necessitate their dominance - they may be considered less useful than the epistemologies of earlier stages or compartmentalised to particular domains. Such developmental arrest or compartmentalisation may be quite deliberate if development seemingly leads away from the security and truth of fundamentalist epistemologies.

A more concrete, though somewhat anecdotal analogy from neuroscience may serve to clarify this thesis’s position on the relative values of different epistemologies. Clinical Professor of Neurology at Albert Einstein of , Oliver Sacks, recounts the case history of a patient suffering from visual agnosia: While we were walking, my attention was caught by the pictures on the walls...I strolled past them curiously - they were in chronological order. All his [the patient's] earlier work was naturalistic and realistic, with vivid mood and atmosphere, but finely detailed and concrete. Then, years later they became less vivid, less concrete, less realistic and naturalistic; but far more abstract, even geometrical and cubist. Finally, in the last paintings, the canvasses became nonsense, or nonsense to me - mere chaotic lines and blotches of paint...This wall of paintings was a tragic pathological exhibit, which belonged to neurology, not art...Perhaps, in his cubist period, there might have been both artistic and pathological development, colluding to engender an original form; for as he lost the concrete, so he might have gained in elements of the abstract, developing a greater sensitivity to all the structural elements of line, boundary, contour - an almost Picasso-like power to see, and equally depict, those abstract organisations embedded in, and normally lost in, the concrete...Though in the final pictures, I feared, there was only chaos and agnosia. (Sacks, 1985:16) The case in point serves to exemplify the importance of both concrete and 20

abstract images familiar to fundamentalisms and liberalisms respectively. The capacities for such images are arguably developmental but both are necessary for normative function. By analogy, at their pathological extremes fundamentalisms (concrete images) and liberalisms (abstract images) represent two exclusive epistemologies - mutually and definitively opposed. Normal development, at least neurologically speaking, requires not exclusivity of the concrete and the abstract - but interaction between the two (1985:18).

The stage structures that this paper purports to underlie fundamentalism serve a specific purpose in the ongoing development of the individual within community. Many of the parts that together make fundamentalism a recognisable whole, are never relegated by later development - they are assimilated. However, development is a dynamic process; it provides a standard for value judgment inasmuch as fundamentalism arrests the dynamic changes of development.

Commentators are divided in their approaches to fundamentalism. Its defenders embrace the term with pride. Its detractors range from the tolerant to the scathingly critical. Regardless of approach, all agree that fundamentalism in its various guises is a phenomenon that has shaped and will continue to shape the course of history in powerful ways. Its social and historical significance coupled with its increasing prominence at the frontiers of the religious east and west, warrants such attempts as this to understand it.

The position espoused by this thesis is twofold. It embraces the structures that give rise to fundamentalism but is critical of fundamentalism (or any other ism) as a phylogenetic structure that arrests ontogenetic development. In order to understand and appreciate the developmental approach to fundamentalism contained herein, it is necessary to first locate it in an understanding of self as researcher.

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Meta-Narrative Context

This final section leads to the conceptual synthesis. It is a unique section, perhaps overlooked or omitted in many similar theses but necessitated by the nature of the study. It concerns the personal, subjective genesis of this thesis and the positions assumed therein. I am confident that such a subjective inclusion is necessary for increased . In keeping with the purpose of this section, the tone is inevitably more narrative than the conventions of academic writing endorse. However, to hide the first in the false objectivity of a third person narrative undermines the precise intent of this section - which is to lay open my own development towards a developmental approach. It is for a similar reason that I have chosen to use a chronological- historical approach to analyse developmentalism in the first section of Chapter Two. A discourse, like an individual is a product of historical development. It is often in the context of this development that the discourse (like the individual) is best understood.

Theoretical research is not conceived in a vacuum. It is the product of every level of an individual's experience. Inasmuch as an individual is determined within community, it is a product of community interests. Inasmuch as community is determined within the of an age or sui generis, it is a product of that age. This is not to say that the researcher is a mere puppet of context (though this has been argued). I as researcher have a relative autonomy, a limited freedom, a right to, and a right not to participate in the discourses of my contexts. Paradoxically, I choose and am chosen by the paths that lead me to this thesis.

My life has been lived and perceived through a single discourse that I call Protestant Fundamentalism-. It is a powerful discourse. It is a relatively well-defined discourse. It is an exclusive discourse. It admits no other and represents no other. It is a mega-discourse or meta-narrative encompassing experience (past, present, and future). Few experiences are too

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small and none too large to escape its interpretive grasp. I have never known another worldview. I had no initial conversion to just immersion in.

As an individual, I have thrived within the fundamentalist-evangelical discourse. To many around me I had mastered this discourse. I could move quickly and decisively within its web to repair and reinforce, to repel and to attract. I have spent most of my life being trained and training others in its ways. It has governed my relationships, my hobbies, my career, and my emotions. Yet somehow the passion for truth that made me its most vocal advocate has pushed me beyond its confines.

There are many ways of viewing my development. Indeed development is one of them and the one I am most willing to defend; hence the topic of this thesis. Other's descriptions may be (and have been) less euphemistic. Perhaps I have backslidden, turned my back on the cross, strayed from the flock or perhaps I am to be the prodigal for a time. These are the attributions of the fundamentalist discourse that I have exited.

There are other attributions from other sources. Perhaps I have succumbed to the impersonal selfish of a more liberal faith. Perhaps I have had a crisis of faith and not returned. Perhaps my cognitive dissonance reached critical mass resulting in a worldview change. Perhaps in a postmodern sense, I have been passed between discourses by chance and circumstance while living with the real illusion that I was an active participant in the passage. There is little I can do (outside of personal relationship) to allay potential critic's fears except to say that I have tried and tested many attributions and development is the one that accounts for the most data, and feels right. The former is the only evidence defensible in a thesis to warrant a critical synthesis between model and experience.

The question is, whether my own understanding and experience of this synthesis is demonstrable in other contexts. For this, I turn to the existing literature describing and analysing fundamentalism including accounts of

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fundamentalists and former fundamentalists. The test of development’s applicability lies in the congruence between the stage structure descriptors and the existing analyses, observations, descriptions and representations of fundamentalism. Writing in hindsight, the fit between the structural descriptors and fundamentalism is for the most part, recognised and accepted by fundamentalists themselves. To anticipate the literature of academic fundamentalists discussed in the next section, their disagreement is with, (a) the order of these descriptors in the broader discourse of development, (b) whether or not cognitive development affects religious belief, (c) whether belief has form as well as content and, (d) whether or not development, however demonstrable, is at all necessary or desirable.

Questions (a-c) are answered by the empirical evidence of developmentalists, while question (d) is a less approachable metaphysical matter. While such evidence of development (like all evidence) has been questioned by other disciplines, it is not the primary purpose of this thesis to test the developmental discourse empirically. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse and articulate a theoretical link between developmental stages and fundamentalism. Its success in such an endeavor is measured by the degree of synonymy and congruence between the descriptors of the former and existing descriptions of the latter. Its failure or difficulty will rightly expose weaknesses that the developmentalist must address in order to maintain a structuralist approach.

I am well aware of the contentiousness of my own development. It raises many questions. The stakes of religious discourse are always high. However, structural developmentalism is a meta-narrative discourse. It can accommodate all other attributions of my own change at the level of structure while denying the exclusivity of any one attribution.

The final concern expresses itself in the value of former structures and the nature of the structure/s now embraced. Human development is incremental. To repeat the aforementioned analogy; one must build in order to climb; if one destroys what is below one will fall; one cannot climb higher than the top of a

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building considered complete. This analogy assumes a structuralist position. It would be rejected by a postmodernist approach as containing a teleological bias. However, my claim that development has worth is founded on the evidence of the conflicts and social divisiveness of early stage representations rather than a sense of teleological . This position is not so far removed from an affirmative postmodernism that assumes a position of social responsibility for the distribution of power. The alternative, skeptical postmodernism, makes any response meaningless by its very nature. Protestant Fundamentalism was a stage in the building of my faith. The experiences it pointed me to; the experiences it encouraged me to explore; and the experiences it protected me from, are still the stuff of my existence.

However, I contend that an uninhibited course of development leads beyond fundamentalism. I contend that this position is both theoretically and empirically sustainable. Truly embraced, new stages of development allow deeper understandings, more intrinsic motivations, and in some ways a chance to draw a step closer to the truths fundamentalism seeks to protect. I want to explore ways of making the transition between the two more feasible, less difficult and prolonged. I want to know what can remain of one discourse developing into another. I want to know how ontogenetically developing faith is constructed and deconstructed within such discourses. Finally, as an educator, I want to explore such things in the context of schooling.

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2. CONCEPTUAL SYNTHESIS

2.1 Structural Development: A Critique of an Evolving Discourse in Light of Fundamentalist Epistemology.

2.1.1 Structural development: Epistemological Foundations and Immanuel Kant

Introduction The application of a structural developmental discourse to fundamentalism assumes an epistemological position. The broader structuralist discourse of developmentalism lies between two oft-competing epistemologies. One is characterised by , absolutism, a priori knowledge, and fundamentalism. The other is characterised by , , a posteriori knowledge, and poststructuralism. The structural developmental discourse lies within a philosophical tradition that finds expression in the thinking of German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. It is important, for the sake of objectivity and understanding, to reveal the epistemological foundations of the structural developmental discourse in light of its application to fundamentalism. Developmentalism is indebted to Kantian philosophy. It is with the Kantian assumptions of developmentalism, that fundamentalism takes issue. It makes sense therefore, to examine these assumptions in their initial form; to reengage past epistemological debates, foundational to the synthesis of two modern discourses, at their place of origin. To ignore the legacy of modern developmentalism would be to take the debate out of context and to ignore, the historical dimensions and indebtedness of the modern discourse.

Fundamentalism and poststructuralism alike, question the foundations of structural development as embedded in Kantian thought. tends to lie between these two positions. It is the underlying epistemology of fundamentalism and poststructuralism, expressed as and

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that Kant sought to synthesise. As such, he is criticised by fundamentalists as being naturalistic, agnostic, and fideistic (Geisler, 1999:401- 4), and by poststructuralists as being too objectivist and foundational in his descriptions and use of categories.

Thus, through its embrace of the developmental discourse the essential philosophical assumption of this thesis concerns the perennial philosophical contenders - rationalism and empiricism. These terms are to be understood in their Kantian context. The brief ensuing review of Kant's philosophy will establish the philosophical foundations on which Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, Oser and Gmünder, and Fowler (the developmentalists) built their theories. It will examine the essential epistemological critiques of structuralist philosophy and thus provide a deliberate context for the continuing application of structural developmental theory to the concept of fundamentalism.

Kant's epistemological synthesis All theses logically (if not consciously), assume a philosophical position. Empiricism and rationalism are the chicken and the egg of philosophy - which came first? Is the empiricism of yesterday, the rationalism of today? Is the a priori of today, the a posteriori of yesterday? In the legacy of Kant, developmentalism offers a response to a dilemma, which in many guises has been debated since the pre-Socratics.

All philosophical theories of knowledge lie between or at the extreme of rationalism and empiricism. The complexities of are essentially derivatives of this epistemological divide. Rationalism is the belief that reason, untainted by experiential subjectivity is a universal source of knowledge. Kant contrasts rationalism with empiricism where empiricism is the claim that all cognition should derive from experience alone (Caygill, 1995: 344). Rationalism is synonymous with a priori knowledge. A priori knowledge is that which (in Kantian terms) is absolutely independent of all experience. It is pure and universal (Kant in Want & Klimowski, 1996).

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Empiricism is largely synonymous with a posteriori knowledge. A posteriori knowledge is that which is "gathered from experience" (Caygill: 35). These concepts pose fundamental questions for the structural developmental discourse and the of fundamentalisms (plural intended) explored in this thesis. Is a fundamentalist worldview wholly the product of experience? Alternatively, is experience organised by pre-existing (a priori) structures? Would such structures be necessarily universal? Can it be known if knowledge exists before experience? Are there any valid criteria for judging one discourse more legitimate than another discourse? Should such criteria be derived from a posteriori or a priori knowledge? This thesis's implicit and explicit answers to these questions are located within the Kantian tradition.

Immanuel Kant's answers to these questions were not formulated in a philosophical vacuum. His synthesis came at a time when the rift between rationalism and empiricism was foremost in scholarly consciousness. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677), and Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) represented the rationalists. The empiricists were represented by John Locke (1632-1704), George Berkeley (1685-1753), and (1711-1776). Kant was heavily influenced by the philosophy of Hume, Locke and Rousseau. Though trained in rationalism, he respected the scepticism of Hume: "[Hume] interrupted my dogmatic slumbers and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction" (Korner, 1987:220).

This new direction ultimately led him to defend a priori axioms from Hume's attacks on causality. Kant appreciated Locke's effort to establish pure ideas but disagreed with Locke's view that such ideas could be derived wholly from experience (Blakney, 1960:44). He aspired to the humanitarian romanticism of Rousseau. His intellectual regard for Hume; his dissatisfaction with Locke's pure ideas derived from experience; and his appreciation for Rousseau's ideals perhaps motivated his attempt to synthesise the empirical and the rational in human . This synthesis is reflected in the structural developmentalist claims that universal stage structures interact with the contextual particulars of logico-mathematical and social experience.

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Kant's central thesis was that the possibility of human knowledge presupposes the active participation of the human . His monumental work Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787) was an attempt to show that reason determines the conditions under which knowledge through experience is possible. To appreciate this deceptively simple assertion and its relationship to structural development one must first examine Kant's conceptions of a priori and a posteriori knowledge in more detail.

A priori and a posteriori knowledge Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is prefaced by the likening of his epistemological position to a Copernican revolution in perspective (Want & Klimowski, 1996:64). This revolution upturned the traditional assumption that knowledge must conform to objects by asserting that in objects conformed to knowledge. Kant then continues to prepare a defence of a priori knowledge: There can be no doubt whatever that all our knowledge begins with experience...but, although all our knowledge begins with experience it by no means follows that it all originates from experience. For it may well be that experience is itself made up of two elements, one received through impression of sense, and the other supplied from itself by our faculty of knowledge on occasion of those impressions (7-8). Herein Kant establishes the two elements of Piaget's later interactionism - experience and pre-existing faculties.

The traditional assumption that Kant refuted was that human knowledge conformed to some external reality - a sort of Platonian theory of forms; the human mind revolved around external objects like the pre-Copernican sun around the earth. Intellectual endeavour was about revealing external truths and reality. In the realm of religion, knowledge from revelation, royal and ecclesiastical authority assumed to interpret experience a priori. In the Kantian system, ontological knowledge of an external reality was impossible. Revelation and reason were separate.

Thus began a pivotal shift (not necessarily representative of Kant's intention) in 29

Western worldviews. Attention turned from the external to the internal, from knowledge of a transcendent and detached God to knowledge of human consciousness. Rousseau championed a revived while Hume explored some of the darker implications of such an axiomatic shift. The Humean being existed as string of reactions and sensations in "perpetual flux and movement" (in Sacks, 1985:119). Hume's somewhat pessimistic implication was that the individual did not exist with a conscious, centred identity, being instead a "consecution of sensations, or perceptions" (119).

For later developmentalists like Erikson and Fowler, Hume's description of human identity described a deviation rather than a standard; a failure to centre faith in a secure ultimate (Fowler) or the effects or unresolved crisis (Erikson). More recently, neurologist Oliver Sacks (1995:118-119) has described Hume's human as more typical of a rare neuro-pathology exhibited in extreme cases of Tourette's syndrome or Korsakov's disease. The normal individual has a centred, owned sense of perception and proprioception. Fowler would call this faith.

Herein lies a core point in understanding the epistemology of fundamentalism. There is a distinctive fundamentalist fear (to be addressed later in the Chapter) that Kant's and are stages on the path to a scepticism of Humean proportions. Such scepticism (fundamentalists fear) leads inevitably to a and despair made manifest in the most hideous immoralities and sociopathic behaviours. This fear will be discussed in developmental terms in a later section.

Kant's philosophy functioned as a dialectic between the rejection of external noumena and fear of existential nihilism. However, as a dialectic, Kant's categories and later developmentalists’ universal stages are seen as flawed by fundamentalists and poststructuralists alike - but for opposing reasons. As a self-professed Christian, Kant sought to escape the scepticism of Hume (and hence a form of nihilism) through his defence of a priori axioms as marks of a creator God.

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Kant's Axioms and Moral Imperative In Kantian terms, a priori knowledge “is independent of all experience...pure, when it is unmixed with anything empirical” (Kant, 1946:XI). Kant was eager to escape Locke's mistake of trying to derive universal axioms from a posteriori knowledge. Kant's a priori knowledge necessitates itself and is obligatorily universal. In his Critique of Practical Reason Kant postulates three such a priori axioms: the freedom of will, the immortality of the , and the (Kant in Jones, 1971:Ch 1). These three axioms act as foundations for human experience but cannot themselves be accurately described or revealed by particular experience. They are revealed through pure analytic judgments and mistakenly transferred into and corrupted by, the a posteriori realm of synthetic judgments.

The fundamentalist criticism of Kant's agnosticism is leveled at his rejection of epistemology or knowledge from revelation. Geisler, Schaeffer, Rushdoony and LaHaye, all fundamentalist apologists later reviewed, argue that Christ as the human embodiment of God reveals the character of God. In Kantian terms fundamentalists believe that Christ was both a priori and a posteriori - that he was the one human who transcended the law of non- conversion between analytic and synthetic judgments.

Kant's axiom of gave rise to his universal standard or ethic - the categorical imperative. The one and only categorical imperative is, “act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (Kant in Caygil, 1995:100). Kant distinguished the categorical imperative from hypothetical imperatives that he defined as morals directing actions towards ends. Hence, hypothetical imperatives are not purely a priori. The categorical imperative on the other hand, as outlined in Kant's Grounding for the of Morals (1785), is self-necessitated and derived independent of circumstance or synthetic judgment. It underpins Kant's deontological (duty centred) . The implications of Kant's axioms and imperatives for the concepts of faith and fundamentalism are significant.

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Kant's moral axiom of free will and its implied categorical imperative enable his philosophy to access ought judgments rather than is statements. As such, Kant escapes philosophical nihilism or moral relativism. However, his categorical imperative is less prescriptive than fundamentalism allows, and more prescriptive than relativism allows. This access to moral or value judgment is a vital part of any treatment of faith development and worldview because it enables (rightly or wrongly) a limited value criticism of the same. Kantian philosophy would rebut a view of faith and ethos founded upon moral scepticism or relative antinomy inasmuch as such metaphysics motivated action. Kant's existential world contained a polyglot of contents and synthetic beliefs, legitimated only by their conception from a priori axioms. In a Kantian system, faith may have diverse contents but should be founded on true axioms.

Fundamentalism's moral particulars are not derived from a categorical imperative. Rather, they are prescribed from revelation (often Scripture). Though it is true that such revelations may be seen to prescribe their own axioms (i.e. do unto others), the moral particulars of fundamentalist communities are held to be inextricable from the character of the divine. In addition, in monotheistic fundamentalisms the character of the divine is perceived to be infallibly revealed in the particular detail of Scripture. Kant thought such particulars to be the culturally embedded periphery of . Poststructuralists are likely to criticise Kant's categorical imperative and axioms on the same grounds.

Kant and religion Kant’s axioms presupposing the existence of God and human immortality could not be used to support the particulars of religion when translated into the world of phenomena (Rushdoony, 1971:299). This accounts for Kant's reluctance to discuss the particulars of religions. His Critiques of pure and practical reason, his works on the metaphysics of morals and ethics (1796,1797) and Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason ([trans] 1973) equate God with the notion of the highest good. The highest good cannot prescribe morals as commands, for

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ethics then becomes heteronymous (Korner: 169).

Kant delves beneath the particular creeds of worldview in his concept of true religion: There is only one true religion; but there can be many varieties of religious creeds...It is therefore more appropriate to say: this man is of the Jewish, Mohammedan, Christian religious creed, than: he is of this or that religion. (In Korner: 170). Kant himself was religious but drew his respect for religion from the moral they contained: I distinguish the teaching of Christ from the report we have of the teaching of Christ, and in order to get at the former I try above all to extract the moral teaching separated from all precepts of the New Testament. The former is surely the fundamental doctrine of the Gospel, the latter can only be an auxiliary doctrine (170-171). He received a royal warning for his writings on religion on October 1, 1794. In a letter signed by the King, he was threatened not to mention religion or Christianity in his future writings. Previously in 1794, in an article The End of All Things, Kant had written: Should it once happen that Christianity stops being lovable (which could indeed occur were it armed with imperious authority, instead of its gentle spirit), then rejection and rebellion against it would inevitably come to be the dominant way of thought among men. (In Want & Klimowski, 1996:153) Kant retained his Christianity at a symbolic level, denying that he had "made any judgment on the Bible or Christianity in his teaching" but ceased to discuss religious matters in the public arena (Want et al, 1996:154).

Fundamentalist apologists criticise Kant on several fronts, including his Biblical . Apologist Norman Geisler argues that Kant's philosophical legacy has "devastated Western epistemology" (1999:403). Geisler concludes his rebuttal of Kant: However, Kant's agnosticism is self defeating, he begs the question by assuming a moral uniformitarianism, and he assumes the nature of a scientific "law" to be a universal sine qua non, rather than a statistical generalization. For Kant to avoid the miraculous, he had to eliminate the accounts from 33

the basic documents of Christianity, without any historical reason for doing so. (199:405) Postmodern critics would perhaps agree with Geisler's criticism of Kant, "he assumes the nature of a scientific "law" to be a universal sine qua non, rather than a statistical generalization". However, the agreement between fundamentalism and poststructuralism would cease concerning the nature of the miraculous.

Kant's work inspired both functionalist and phenomenological philosophy. The functionalists turned Kant's a priori conditions into underlying social facts. Phenomenological adherents developed the implications of his a posteriori philosophy while rejecting his axiomatic postulates. Hence, somewhat ironically Kant is seen by some fundamentalists (Rushdoony, 1971; Geisler, 1999; LaHaye, 1979) as the instigator of poststructuralism and by poststructuralists as the defender of a fundamentalistic innate objectivism.

It is a valid criticism that developmentalism bears a Kantian tradition prejudiced against fundamentalism. Kant reacted against the fundamentalist religious establishments of his day. This criticism is best answered by the empirical evidences provided by later developmentalists. Nonetheless, the Kantian origins of developmental theory prescribe to some extent the very nature, collection and interpretation of this empirical data.

Summarily, Kant's philosophical contribution to the context of development and fundamentalism is grounded in his understanding of a priori and a posteriori knowledge; in his promotion of the categorical imperative as an axiomatic rule for the construction of creed; and in his consequent unity of religious intent. Thus, Kant's philosophy is most practically applicable as a universal ethic. In a Kantian framework the divisions between fundamentalisms and relativisms result from impossible attempts to reconcile the concept of an absolute Being with a concept of representation (Want & Klimowski, 1996:41). Herein lies the link to structural developmental theory which views such attempts at reconciliation as differentiated by structure and stage.

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2.1.2 Stage Theories: Freud and Piaget

Introduction In this section, the concept of development will be examined in light of two theorists, and , representing genetic epistemology and psychoanalysis respectively. These theories approach the same problems of fundamentalist epistemology from slightly different perspectives; though both tend to operate within a Kantian framework. The intent of the following review is to provide a context for the further analysis of fundamentalism. Specific attention is given to the Piagetian mechanisms of development assumed by Kohlberg and Fowler as discussed in later sections.

This section utilises the term fundamentalist worldview to refer to fundamentalism. This term is used in order to focus the Piagetian frame of reference. It is perhaps the term most useful when analysing religious belief in the context of Freudian and Piagetian theory. The term worldview will be subsumed under the term faith when discussing Fowler's developmental approach in a later section.

Fundamentalism and Worldview In this context a worldview is organised macrothought that determines behaviour and decision-making (Kearney, 1984). Complementing this definition is William Cobern's definition as used in the context of : Worldview refers to the culturally-dependent, generally subconscious, fundamental organization of the mind. This organization manifests itself as a set of or assumptions which predispose one to feel, think, and act in predictable patterns. (1998:1) This definition raises several questions that serve to focus the following discussion. Is a fundamentalist worldview a legitimate epistemological concept? Is a fundamentalist worldview developmentally dynamic? What cognitive processes described by Piaget facilitate the construction of a fundamentalist worldview? What Freudian a priori motivations and a posteriori structures govern such processes? Are fundamentalist worldviews nativist or

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empiricist, ontogenetic or phylogenetic according to Freudian and Piagetian theory?

Freud and Developmental Stages Freud’s contribution to developmentalism is significant. The combination of his legacy in developmental theory and his analyses of religion justify a brief exploration to highlight some considerations for the synthesis of developmentalism and religious fundamentalism.

Freud’s theories evolved out of his studies with psychiatric patients and his attempts to rationalise his own perceived neuroses in later life. Freud, like Piaget was dissatisfied with existing transcendent explanations of the mind. He sought to find a rational explanation for neuroticism and its pathogenetic effects.

Freud studied the sublimated mental effects of a reproductive urge he termed eros. His thesis was that innate sexual desire manifested itself in complex ways through human behaviour. To Freud, the human mind maintained a fragile equilibrium between sexual desire and fear. He studied cases of neurosis and concluded that such behaviours were the pathological results of a subconscious in which the equilibrium had been disturbed.

Freud's search for a neuropathological theory of the mind led him to develop the notion of a repressed conflict that surfaced as neurosis when the equilibrium of the conflict was disturbed. Freud's observations of patients (Anna O, Hans, and Rat man) and his interpretations of his own and sufferings led him to the conclusion that eros or sexual desire was the primary cognitive and behavioural motivator. In 1923 Freud published The Ego and the Id, expounding his theory of the human mind; a cognitive civil war between the id and the superego, mediated by the ego which itself was often attacked (Church in Neu, 1991:217-8).

In 1905, Freud published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. In these essays, he identified four stages of psychosexual development - oral, anal,

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phallic, and latency (Appignanesi & Zarate, 1992:77-99). The adolescent encounters the phallic and latency stages. In his previous publication, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901 in Neu,1991) Freud identified a conflict between the preconscious or the reality principle and the unconscious or the pleasure principle. His thesis was that sexual desires (pleasure principle) are repressed (latency) for fear of repercussion if they are recognised (reality principle).

Between 1923 and 1930 Freud labeled the mental structures he had identified and applied his theory to social organisation. The primitive desires of the unconscious he called the id. The facilitator of reality and the unconscious he called the ego. In Civilisation and its Discontents (1930), he proposed a super- ego; the institutionalised fear of parental authority (In Strachey Trans. 1961). Freud noted that the challenge for a student of cognitive development was to “chart the course of growth of these compromising mental structures” (Kessen in Mischel, 1971: 289). This challenge is accepted and addressed in the later work of Piagetian developmentalists.

Freud and Religion In Freudian terms, a fundamentalist worldview is a cognitive structure dominated by forces of super-ego repression. The nature of the content assimilated into this structure may be traced to this conflict. In and Taboo (1912-13), and Civilisation and its Discontents (1930), Freud postulated that repression was institutionalised through religion (Paul in Neu, 1991:267). He generalised that religious practices were forms of group neuroses. In Freudian terms, religious fundamentalist worldviews are structured super-egos that repress selfish ego instincts concerning the survival of the organism (270).

Freud believed that there is truth in religion; that it arose from a shared human sense of dependence; that some of its moral axioms are quite desirable; and that it is genuinely comforting (Geisler, 1999:264). However, he also considered religion to be illusory, primitive, immature, authoritarian, and harmfully arresting of sexual development (264).

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According to Freud, the confusion, anxiety, and rebellion common to adolescence are the results of a conflict between a maturing libido (sexual instinct) and fear of repercussions of expression. Hence, the adolescent worldview is a construction of the ego that regulates this expression. The specific content and creed of a worldview serves either purpose. It will be used to either repress or release adolescent sexual desire depending upon the complex combination of maturational and social factors. Neuroticism is the result of extreme repression or extreme release. Freud contended that authoritarian religions requiring extreme repression, when rejected, often resulted in a reactionary case of extreme release.

In Interpretation of Dreams (1896) and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) he identified ways in which the id escaped, disguised, into the reality of the conscious (Freud in Strachy [trans.], 1961). As such, a worldview as a construct of the ego may serve to reveal or aid in the disguising. This depends on its content. Freud acknowledged this dependency in his later works such as The Future of an Illusion (1928 in Strachy [Trans], 1961). While not wishing to embrace the holistic summations of Freud's theory of religion (for this is beyond the scope of this thesis), his concern with the authoritarian religious repression of development is a primary concern in the thesis. It is to be explored in more detail in the next chapter under Fowler's Aspect of Faith - Locus of Authority.

Summarily, Freud's theories observe the broader religious context of fundamentalism as an early developmental illusion sustained by powerful institutions. He likens authoritarian religion to a repressive neurosis. He that sexual development is often arrested by the repression of such neuroses. Freud's broader judgments on religion are not assumed in the position of this thesis. Indeed, such judgments are far beyond its scope. Nonetheless, Freud's observations are valuable, both as a historical precedent to the developmental discourse and as empirical (his case studies) evidence of socio-religious discourses affecting otherwise normal development. Whether or not such religious intervention is necessary, and normal development is actually

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entropic, is an issue for fundamentalists and certainly not the primary concern of this thesis.

Freud's concepts of stage development, repression, and arrest contributed to a broadening developmental tradition that was to be popularised by Swiss epistemologist, Jean Piaget.

Piaget, Structural Development and Fundamentalism Piaget contributes the essential terminology and understanding of modern developmental theory. He also contributes greatly to the methodological development and collection of empirical data to test and question the theory. Piagetian concepts are at the centre of the synthesis between developmentalism and fundamentalism.

Jean Piaget pursued doctorates in both philosophy and . Dissatisfied with transcendental explanations of the mind, he sought to produce a biological explanation of cognitive functions. James Fowler summarises Piaget's approach and relationship to Kant assuming a first person role: My central question across nearly sixty years of work may be stated in terms of the decisive legacy of Kant's critical philosophy. What operations of mind can be scientifically demonstrated to underlie the achievement of rationally certain knowledge and how do those operations take form in human beings? To Kant's interest in the a priori forms and categories by which we shape and reflect on experience, I bring the question of development. (1981:44) In Introduction a`l Epistemologie Genetique (in Messerly, 1996:54) Piaget defined genetic epistemology as, “the study of mechanisms whereby bodies of knowledge grow”. He rejected the Darwinian notion that external natural selection tests internal mutations and the Lamarckian notion that external changes caused the internal inheritance of previously acquired characteristics (Messerly: xi). He sought to formulate and test a genetic theory of knowledge.

In Freudian and Piagetian terms, a fundamentalist worldview may be considered developmentally distinctive inasmuch as the processes that organise it and the motivations behind these processes are affected by 39

cognitive development (Piaget) and psychosexual development (Freud). A fundamentalist worldview is a legitimate developmental and epistemological concept to the extent that it exists (in Piagetian terms) as a manifestation of developing cognitive structures and a coordination of transferable schemes. Their respective theories offer answers to the questions: What cognitive processes form fundamentalist worldviews, and what motivates these processes?

Piaget's stage theory asserts that cognitive development proceeds through a series of stages. A stage is a period of time in which thinking and behaviour reflect underlying cognitive structures (Miller, 1993:38). Piaget identified four such stages or periods - sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. During the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years) infants make sense of the world by direct physical engagement with their immediate environments. During the preoperational stage (2 to 7 years) children develop the ability to represent objects symbolically. During the concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years) children develop the ability to perform and organise internalised mental operations. During the formal operational stage (11 to 15 years) children acquire the ability to apply mental operations to abstract concepts and hypothetical situations.

According to Piaget, stage development is governed by several principles; a stage is a structured whole in a state of equilibrium; each stage derives from the previous stage, incorporates and transforms that stage, and prepares for the next stage; stages follow an invariant sequence; stages are universal; and stages are marked by a transitional period, equilibrium and a preparational period (Miller, 1993:38-40). The application of these stages to fundamentalism is a primary objective of this thesis.

Piaget describes the processes of a cognitive system in terms of function, content organisation, adaptation, accommodation, assimilation, structure and scheme. Interacting within these cognitive processes are factors of maturation, physical experience, logico-mathematical experience, social transmission, and

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equilibration (Boyle, 1969:28-29). These concepts provide the basic tools for the structural developmental deconstruction of fundamentalism. In a Piagetian framework, a fundamentalist (as any) worldview is a product of these processes and interactive factors.

A function is an invariant cognitive process. All cognitive systems function using adaptation and organisation. Adaptation is a system's ability to change and filter content (input and output). Organisms adapt through assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the cognitive reception of content resulting from the application of an existing scheme to a new situation (Campbell, 2000:6). Accommodation is the process by which the content changes the nature of cognitive reception in order create schemes to better fit the environment: This interaction leads to cognitive stages which represent the transformations of simple early cognitive structures as these are applied to (or assimilate) the external world and as they are accommodated to or restructured by the external world in the course being applied to it (Phillips, 1975:13). Organisation refers to the fact that cognitive systems seem to operate in an ordered way - to achieve or fulfil an evolutionary goal - survival.

These invariant processes act on dynamic structures and schemes. Structure, “refers to the systemic properties of an ” (Phillips, 1975:9) and scheme refers to the generic units of structure that may generalised to a variety of contents. The extent to which a fundamentalist worldview is a cognitive “action that may be generalised to other contents” is not quantifiable. However, such a structure is observable in the coherence and scope of metaphysical beliefs that affect behaviour. The very existence of cognitive dissonance between different worldviews would suggest that some form of structure exists that may be generalised to accommodate, assimilate, or reject incoming content.

To incorporate Cobern's definition, a worldview is organised macrothought that affects behaviour and decision-making. Macrothought refers to metaphysical assumptions or cognitive content that act as first principles. In Piagetian terms, a worldview is organised content subject to the dynamism of cognitive schemes and structures that operate by assimilation and accommodation. Therefore, a 41

fundamentalist worldview is constant inasmuch as it operates within a particular structure.

While a fundamentalist worldview may be a cognitively legitimate concept, in a popular sense it is usually defined by its content. Content is grouped characteristically into various social discourses that are used to describe worldviews. Whether one begins with the dynamics and particulars of social discourse or the generative cognitive structures is a matter of epistemological preference. The difference in approach separates sociology and psychology respectively.

A person may be holistically labeled as being a fundamentalist, a poststructuralist, structuralist, humanist, etceteras (Sire, 1988). The problem with such generalised labels is the inexactitude of their application; their failure to acknowledge that conflicting schemata may be compartmentalised within a single mind; their failure to acknowledge the dynamism of schemata; and the ambiguity of the content that defines the schemata.

Piaget's own quest to find a genetic explanation for epistemology resulted from his frustrations with traditional transcendental and supernatural explanations of the mind. He revealed the complexity of the cognitive process and the inadequacy of many pseudo-psychological explanations. An appreciation of Piaget's epistemology is essential for a developmental understanding of fundamentalism.

Interactionism Piaget's epistemology is the product of creative interactionism. Freud's epistemology reflects a mediated cognitive conflict between primal desires and instituted fears. The early motivations and of each theorist provide an insight into their holistic approaches to the psychology of the mind.

Piaget's search for a theory of genetic epistemology led him to develop the idea of interactionism between the mind and the environment.

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...There is no longer any need to choose between the primacy of the social or that of the intellect: collective intellect is the social equilibrium resulting from the interplay of the operations that enter into all cooperation. (Piaget, 1970:114) This is a fundamental assertion of developmental theory - that development occurs through interaction. Piaget theorised that the mind could respond creatively to changes in the external environment. His avoidance of the classic nature-nurture dichotomy is commonly expressed in the developmentalist cliché`: Development is not simply the unfolding of a pattern dictated by the genes, nor is it simply the importation of structures from the physical and social environment (Campbell, 2000:9). While concentrating on cognitive action and its ontogenetic development, Piaget acknowledged the dynamism of the relationship between the intellect and the external social environment. Importantly, a structural developmental approach to fundamentalism assumes that it is a product of interplay between socially formulated and transmitted contents and basic universal structuring tendencies.

Piaget's interactionism is the holistic result of the interrelationships between maturation, physical experience, logico-mathematical experience, social transmission, and equilibration (Phillips, 1975:17-19). The interaction between these factors is being tested as current cognitive neuroscience looks for the creation of new biological systems through dynamic interaction with external influences (Johnson, 1997). Any notion of a fundamentalist worldview in a Piagetian system must account for the characteristic contributions of these factors.

Maturation refers to the genetic capabilities that would determine the level of content able to be assimilated to form a worldview. Physical experience refers to experience with the nature of physical objects that results in knowledge of the . Differentiation between worldviews caused by different physical experiences would only be so inasmuch as physical experience gives rise to logico-mathematical experience. Logico-mathematical experience is the construction of relationships between objects. This would have an effect on a worldview inasmuch as a worldview acts as a logico-mathematical function 43

that assimilates and systematises knowledge according to a particular epistemology.

Equilibration refers to the cognitive tendency to maintain balance between assimilation and accommodation. Development occurs through the perpetual counterbalancing of the relationships between these factors. A fundamentalist worldview may be seen as a cognitive filter that regulates the level of input and the type of content assimilated from these factors.

Social transmission refers to the gaining of secondary knowledge from others. It is almost certainly organised to an extent by socially transmitted structures. The extent to which this is the case, is contested by the disciplines of sociology and cognitive psychology. Sociology emphasises the primacy of community dynamics in determining individual identity whereas psychology emphasises the primacy of individual cognition as guiding social process. A brief digression to this sociological approach enables an appreciation of Piaget's factor - social transmission. The observation of social transmission from a sociological perspective serves to reveal a shared interdisciplinary perspective between Anthony Giddens’s Structuration Theory and Piaget’s developmental interactionism. This perspective informs an important factor in the developmental analysis of fundamentalism - the structuring power of contents.

Social transmission: Durkheim and Giddens The sociological perspective is itself divided between functionalism and more recent structuration theories. In the functionalism of Emile Durkheim, the content of any particular fundamentalist worldview would be the product of a group's interaction with archetypal social structures (Cuzzort and King, 1995:21). In the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens, a fundamentalist worldview would be the product of the reciprocated relationship between human agency and dynamic social structures (Bryant and Jary, 1991:7).

Giddens, like Piaget, brings sociology and psychology closer together. While Piaget affirms the importance of social transmission and the dynamics thereof,

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Giddens restore the importance of human agency in the constitution of social structures: Many sociologists picture these patterns as rather like the walls of a building...This is misleading because it implies too static or unchanging an image of what societies are like: because it does not indicate that the patterning of social systems only exists in so far as individuals repeat particular forms of conduct from one time and place to another. (Giddens, 1986:12) In its application to worldviews, ideology, and belief, structuration acknowledges the need to understand individual intentions, motivations, and psychology.

In Gidden's New Rules of Sociological Method (1976) and Sociology: A Brief but Critical Introduction (1986) one finds not the oppressive yoke of society enslaving the individual but an attempt to: grasp how history is made through the active involvements and struggles of human beings, and yet at the same time both forms those human beings and produces outcomes which they neither intend nor foresee. (Giddens, 1986:156) This theoretical shift between Durkheim and Giddens reflects a reciprocating respect between sociology and psychology's treatment of the community and the individual respectively.

Giddens's structuration theory attempts to reconcile the two within the study of sociology. His sociology as outlined in his New Rules of Sociological Method (1976) examines the dynamism of abstract social structures while empathising with the intentions and perceptions of society's individuals (In Giddens and Pierson, 1998). He curbs Durkheim's rigid empiricism of social facts arguing: We cannot treat human activities as though they were determined by causes in the same way as natural events are...because societies only exist in so far as they are created and recreated in our own actions as human beings. (1986:11) He takes further issue with Durkheim's sociological by pointing out that humans unlike innate objects of scientific analysis “may change their behaviour in light of [such] knowledge” (12).

Durkheim believed that social facts transcend the sum of individual actions, being external to them:

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[When] men think in common their thought is, in part, the work of the community. The community acts upon them, weighs down upon them with all its authority, restrains their egoistic desires and directs their towards a collective end. (in Parkin, 1992:79) Durkheim argued that social facts could not be revealed by examining individual consciousness.

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim anticipated a structuralist answer to the question of religious authenticity: In reality, then, there are no religions which are false. All are true in their own fashion; all answer, though in different ways, to the given conditions of human existence...The reasons with which the faithful justify them may be, and generally are, erroneous; but the true reasons do not cease to exist. (in Thompson, 1982:122) This is a view to which fundamentalism is greatly opposed. Piagetian interactionism is able to absorb and value the sociological approach as a very significant factor in development. It is a factor that is most applicable to fundamentalism. However, it must be understood in the context of the other factors of development.

Thus, a fundamentalist worldview in terms of Piagetian interactionism would be a product of the creative interplay between dynamic cognitive schemata and the social environment. Therefore, a fundamentalist worldview is subject to the social and biological distinctives operating within the unchanging functions of the intellect.

Protestant Fundamentalism and Piagetian Development It is possible to observe fundamentalism in light of the broader contentions of Piaget's developmental theory. A more specific analysis will be undertaken in the next chapter. The cognitive tenets of Protestant fundamentalism are often cited as forming a worldview (Sire, 1988:Ch.2). In Piagetian terms, Protestant Fundamentalism and other fundamentalisms are culturally and cognitively organised content. Piagetian theory would challenge the notion of Protestant Fundamentalism passing through developing schemes and structures as an

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objectively true and unchanging conviction. The contents of belief are static or fundamental only as long as they exist in a particular stage. The descriptive language of contents may stay the same throughout development but the qualitative perception of the contents may differ. This is because of the Piagetian belief that interaction between accommodation and assimilation (the invariants that process the content of a fundamentalist worldview) changes the biological nature of the mind. Any constancy in fundamentalism exists in a societal pool of contents. Content constancy does not exist in the real development of an individual mind (though linguistic or attributive constancy may). Herein, lies a core contention.

Developmentally understood, a system of belief based on unchanging convictions, understandings, and doctrinal propositions must reflect a particular stage of development. If an individual develops beyond such a stage then so must their understandings of the propositions of their system of belief. The difficulty for Protestant Fundamentalism (and some other fundamentalisms) is that the convictions and understandings of the discourse are seen as salvific knowledge applicable to all ages and stages of life. If the standard tenets (beliefs) of fundamentalist faith are the only access to salvation (John 3:18-19, Acts 16:31, Rom 10:4,9,10,14) then it would be expected that they be appreciable regardless of age or stage.

At this point, the developmentalist takes issue. Piaget argues, "...real religion, at any rate during the first years, is quite definitely anything but the over- elaborated religion with which he [sic] is plied" (1973:399-400). Consequently, fundamentalisms, as worldviews self-defined primarily by static contents must either: reject wholly the notion of structural development; arrest development (Shinn, 1984); represent the penultimate stage of development (and therefore be inaccessible to most); or value precocious utterances of over-elaborated belief as true signs of salvation.

In Protestant Fundamentalism, this developmental issue often appears in the concrete dilemmas: do children who do not or cannot articulate the core

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propositions of the fundamentalist worldview go to heaven; do the intellectually disabled go to heaven; do those aged who have amnesia to the point of forgetting such propositions go to heaven? Christian apologists have offered several explanations (some far from sympathetic to the dilemma) over the ages.

Sacramentalists (including some Catholics, Lutherans, and Anglicans) hold that "no one ascends into the kingdom of heaven, except by means of the sacrament of Baptism...Moreover to this there is no exception, not the infant, nor he who is unavoidably prevented" (Ambrose in Geisler, 1999:360). Similarly, Augustine argued that "Born within the fall, infants inherit real depravity, so the wrath of God abides on unborn babies" (Geisler, 360). Electionists, in the tradition of Calvin argue that only elect infants go to heaven. The Westminster confession (1646) states that "elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ" (Geisler, 361). The foreknowledge theory argues that God only allows those he foreknew would accept him to grow out of infancy. Others speak of universal salvation before "an age of accountability" and evangelisation after death.

Such speculations reveal fundamentalism's characteristic identification with concrete, core propositional knowledge from a revelational source of authority. Piaget argues that such sources of authority and hence the propositions they generate, are themselves subject to natural developmental change. The dilemma serves to highlight a major distinction between the epistemological approaches of fundamentalism and developmentalism.

Conceptions of the World and Fundamentalism Piaget offers some insight into the nature of the schemes and structures that receive the content of such a worldview throughout childhood and early adolescence. In The Child's Conception of the World (1973) Piaget identifies four structural stages that determine (and according to interactionism, are determined by) the content of a worldview. The first stage, realism, is an anthropocentric illusion wherein the child's perspective is seen as “immediately objective and absolute” (1973:46). This stage of cognitive development would

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not allow for the assimilation of fundamentalisms' philosophical (abstract) salvific content.

In the second stage, , the child attributes consciousness to other objects (195). In this stage, fundamentalist concepts of God may be assimilated only as schemes of real objects i.e. God is an old man. In the third stage, artificialism, the child attributes all things to the purposes of humans (human artificialism) or God (divine artificialism) (Ch 11). In this stage theistic fundamentalist content may be assimilated as schemes of purpose i.e. the sun moves because God wants it to.

An important aside is the transition between human and divine artificialism. Piaget, like Freud, believed that all religious systems (worldviews) were the result of transference of power from parents to god/s due to the perceived fallibility of parents during adolescence: The feelings experienced...up till now towards his parents must be directed elsewhere, and it is at this period that they are transferred to the God with which education has provided him [sic]. (Piaget, 1973:425) Freud's, The Future of an Illusion (1927) revealed his belief that God was a neurosis of childhood that adults had failed to outgrow. He argued that religion "keeps people in a perpetual state of childhood and immaturity" (Geisler, 264). Conversely, Fowler (1981) argues that , especially Christianity allow for a full appropriation of development.

In the fourth stage, , the child begins to attribute actions to mechanical relationships between objects due to the recognition of constituent parts (429). In this stage, Piaget noted that theistic explanations are often replaced by mechanistic explanations. This transference may occur as the result of disillusionment with the power of God. In this stage the content of theistic fundamentalism may be subjected to a causal crisis resolved only by its rejection, compartmentalisation, or movement into a different stage. In later adolescence and adulthood these explanations may be reconciled by a type of meta-atomism in which constituent parts of objects and processes act and react according to the mechanistic designs of God. Fowler contends that atomistic 49

explanations may be reconciled with theistic explanations through a recapitulation of contents in stage four of his developmental model.

Summary These applications of Piaget's stages provide developmentalists with answers for the initial questions concerning fundamentalist worldviews. These questions are: Is a fundamentalist worldview a valid concept? Are the stages proposed by Piaget progressive? And, do particular stages discriminate between particular belief contents? In response, Piaget's empirical research and commentary in, The Child's Conception of the World would suggest by extrapolation: that a fundamentalist worldview is a valid concept insomuch as it reflects the structures of a single stage; that this stage must precede stages that account for divergence and dynamism; and that fundamentalism rejects contents that reflect a different stage.

The value and order of progression of Piaget's identified stages is contestable. Piaget himself noted the ambiguity of transitional periods and observed that adults could retain early cognitive schemes in some areas. The conviction with which a worldview may be held, and the reasoning used to defend it may upset the typical stage-age relationships of Piaget's developmental theory. What Freud considers a neurosis and Piaget - arrested development, a theistic fundamentalist could consider to be absolute truth. Adolescents and adults with formal operational abilities may reason and behave according to a worldview in ways that seem to indicate levels of realism, animism, and artificialism.

The developmentalist position is that the mutual relationship between structure and content undermines the notion of a static worldview. In stages of realism, animism, and human artificialism particular knowledge (content) of a creed may be incomprehensible or in Piagetian terms - unable to be assimilated. To return to the fundamentalist worldview, some central tenets of the view are unable to be assimilated during certain stages of development. Appreciation and application of concepts such as incarnation, atonement, vicarious suffering and the are restricted in some stages of development. Piaget's cognitive

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schemes are by way of interactionism, discriminating of the content that is assimilated into them.

Summarily, a worldview defined in light of Freudian and Piagetian theory is primarily a regulatory structure for sexual survival and evolutionary adaptation respectively. Freud provides the motivations and Piaget the structures for cognitive operations. Thus, worldviews are both dynamic and transient - subject to experiences of environment and yet regulating them at the same time. The contents of fundamentalist worldviews interact with the structuring process.

This relationship between content and structure is pivotal to this thesis's contention that fundamentalism, as a compartmentalised worldview, represents particular stage structures. It is a relationship understandably (because of its complexity) but all too often neglected: ...mental structures have content as well as form, and many psychologists, in search of the commanding and essential general principle, have been perilously inattentive to the distinction...the absence of a formal metapsychological account of mental structures will become increasingly painful. (Kessen in Mischel, 1971:291) Piaget's interactionism provides a powerful discourse for understanding the relationship between form and content. His general developmental- interactionist approach is focussed and applied through the later developmentalist studies of Lawrence Kohlberg and James Fowler.

Piaget's contribution to the developmental discourse is significant. His theory of the cognitive dynamics of development is the platform for many developmental applications. His stage theory, the functions of interactionism, and factors of development, define the developmental discourse. His observations in The Child's Conception of the World pose developmental challenges for the static propositional claims of many fundamentalisms.

The remainder of this synthesis is an application of later extrapolations of Piagetian theory. These applications of Piagetian theory provide a focussed synthesis between fundamentalism and development. 51

2.1.3 Moral Development: Kohlberg

Moral development is integral to the study of fundamentalism for two reasons. Firstly, Kohlberg’s research in moral development begins to apply Piagetian concepts to an essentially qualitative field. The methodology and approach provide a necessary link in the transition between the logico-mathematical concerns of Piaget and the research into faith, religion and belief of later developmentalists. Many developmental approaches share the legacy of Kant, Freud and Piaget. Some of these have arisen through a stronger emphasis on social factors in development and others have arisen through application of Piagetian theory to more specific domains of cognition and socialisation i.e. morality, religion, and faith (see Table 1). Secondly, moral development is posited as one of Fowler’s Aspects of Faith. Morality is an essential part of any religious discourse and hence of fundamentalism. Does fundamentalism as a tradition reflect the structuring tendencies of stages of moral development?

Table 1. Comparative Developmental Stages

Piaget Kohlberg Fowler Erikson Oser & (Cognitive (Moral (Faith) (Psychosocial Gmünder Development) Development) Development) (Religious Judgment) Sensorimotor Undifferentiated Trust vs. Mistrust Pre-religious Realism Faith Preoperational Intuitive-Projective Autonomy vs. Shame Absolute heteronomy

Animism Faith and Doubt Orientation Heteronomous Artificialism Mythic-Literal Faith Initiative vs. Guilt "Do ut Des" Orientation Morality Concrete Operational Instrumental Synthetic- Absolute Autonomy Industry vs. Inferiority Atomism Exchange Conventional Faith Orientation Mutual-Interpersonal Individuative- Identity vs. Role Mediated Autonomy Formal Operational Relations Reflective Faith Confusion Orientation Social System and Conjunctive Faith Intimacy vs. Isolation Conscience , Generativity vs. Intersubjective Universalising Faith Individual Rights Stagnation Religious Orientation Universal Ethical Integrity vs. Despair Principles

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Lawrence Kohlberg applied the Piagetian discourse to moral development. He claimed that moral judgment (and action by association) has a rational motivation as well as an affective motivation. This rational motivation develops in accordance with base cognitive structures interacting with the social environment. Kohlberg claimed that his stages were hierarchical, sequential, invariant, and universal. Whereas Piaget focussed his later work on mathematical and scientific constructions of knowledge, Kohlberg sought to examine how structures affected the social world of individuals.

In Moral Judgment Interview (1975), Kohlberg sets out his methodology of hypothetical dilemmas and his tools for analysis. His nine dilemmas are based on principles of morality or justice that he claims are universals: Principles, of course are different from rules, customs or laws. Principles, we might say, are the abstract, generalizable guidelines and tests by which particular actions, laws or social policies may be made or evaluated. The golden rule in its various forms is such a principle. Kant's categorical imperative in its three forms constitutes a universal moral principle. (In Fowler, 1981:83) Sub-questions for each dilemma are designed to probe the participant's judgment and reasoned response. Participant responses are then categorised according to six basic stage structures. Two stages occur at each of three distinct levels - preconventional, conventional, and post-conventional.

The stages may be described (in order of developmental ascendance) as; Punishment and Obedience Orientation; Instrumental Relativist Orientation; Interpersonal Concordance Orientation; Law and Order Orientation; Social- Contract Legalistic Orientation; Universal Ethical Principle Orientation (Duska et al, 1977:45-47). The very nature of these stages has implications for fundamentalism. The application of such stages to fundamentalism in the next chapter observes the sources of social authority that affect moral judgment. It is posited that fundamentalism's unique loci of moral authority arrests typical development as defined by Kohlberg's framework.

Before engaging this analysis it is necessary to locate Kohlberg's theory in the broader developmental tradition of Kant and Piaget. This is necessary, in 53

order to note some of the criticisms that may be leveled by association at its epistemological assumptions.

Kohlberg' s developmental approach assumes Piaget's interactionism: The cognitive-developmental assumption is that basic mental structure is the result of an interaction between certain organismic structuring tendencies and the structure of the outside world, rather than a reflection of either one directly...This interaction leads to cognitive stages which represent the transformations of simple early cognitive structures as these are applied to the external world and as they are accommodated to or restricted by the external world in the course of being applied to it. (Kohlberg, 1984:13) Kohlberg's structuralism also reveals a Kantian legacy.

His developmental theory is grounded (necessarily) in the Kantian tradition of universal principles: In summary, then, universal and regular age trends of development may be found in moral judgment, and these have a formal cognitive base. Many aspects of moral judgment do not have such a cognitive base, but these aspects do not define universal and regular trends of moral development (Kohlberg, 1984:43). Kohlberg has suffered much criticism for his philosophical foundation.

He notes that, "the psychologist cannot study cognition or morality in an epistemologically neutral way" (1981:104). Kohlberg's critics attack his objectivism: The dominant theme in Kohlberg's essays is that what is moral is not a matter of taste or opinion. Kohlberg abhors relativism...Kohlberg's project in these essays is to establish that there is an objective morality which reason can reveal (Schweder, 1982:226,293). Naturally, Kohlberg suffers the same criticisms for his universality as Kant did from his contemporary empiricists. Alternatively, the fundamentalist critique of Kohlberg's structuralism finds fault with his very lack of moral prescription - reducing diverse religious contents to a common morality, similar to Kant's categorical imperative.

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There are a limited number of defensible positions one can take regarding rationalism and empiricism. Almost all have adherents among modern theorists. Kant, Kohlberg, Piaget, and Fowler exemplify similar positions. Perhaps the future of the debate will combine the primacy of particular contents with Piagetian / Kohlbergian interactionism: A knowledge structure theory must make a commitment to particular content schemas. Recent research has pointed out that some processes depend upon the content of the knowledge. (Kiel in Galambos et al, 1986:7) New methodological considerations will perhaps re-ignite age-old in the perennial quest for a universal theory of knowledge (Goldman, 1993:xi-xiii). Kohlberg's work exemplifies the modern use of empirical data, though tentative, to explore moral epistemology. At the same time, he draws from a Kantian tradition. As such, his developmental discourse is always theoretically challenged from the two oppositional fronts of fundamentalism and poststructuralism.

Structural development may rely on the empirical evidences provided by the likes of Piaget's clinical method, and Kohlberg and Fowler's latitudinal studies but will nonetheless remain philosophically moot at its deepest Kantian level. It may be empirically demonstrable that fundamentalism is synonymous with particular mental behaviours and that these mental behaviours are normatively associated with particular stages of development, but it is impossible to answer the criticism that stages are an illusion of a socio-historical epoch to which the empirical research is inevitably confined: Like each of us, Kohlberg himself, his interest in cognitive development...his choice of a Kantian or Deweyian infrastructure for this theory are...in a sense, accidents of time, place and the interaction of his personality with a specifiable social environment and the norms of the subgroups within that environment (Simpson in Kohlberg, 1983:114-115). Nonetheless, Kohlberg reasons that such stages are empirically testable and universally applicable. The universality of such cognitive structures and the processes of interaction that facilitate development have important implications for the cognitive framework of fundamentalism.

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The most obvious implication of interactionism as a general cognitive process is that fundamentalism cannot remain ontogenetically static. This refers not only to the contents (which obviously change with learning) but to the organisation and utilisation of such contents. According to developmentalism, fundamentalism is at all times a product of assimilated content and accommodated structure. Kohlberg and Piaget's interactionism, coupled with his recognition of common stages, is a form of guided dynamism. Popular holistic labels (isms and ists) as applied to individuals may serve to describe static contents but fail to describe individual's dynamic and developing worldviews.

In Kohlberg's theory, contents in and of themselves are poor reflections (to a casual observer) of actual perceptions. Thus, Kohlberg's contribution to fundamentalism, by application, is that any study of such a worldview must search for dynamic processes rather than static contents.

Kohlberg's stages describe ways of perceiving morality. It may be argued that ways of perceiving morality will necessarily be related to fundamentalism inasmuch as morality is a sub-discourse of fundamentalism. Such cognitive stages will influence a variety of metaphysical concerns. The common theme of most developmental theories seems to describe a movement in perspective from egoism through communalism to . If this shift is developmentally valid then it could be suggested that an individual's perspective on the metaphysical questions that constitute the meta-structure of fundamentalisms, is stage dependent.

Kohlberg's studies in moral development reaffirm four principles concerning development through these six stages. Firstly, stage development is invariant. Earlier stages are pre-requisites for later stages. Secondly, subjects cannot comprehend reasoning more than one stage beyond their own. Thirdly, subjects are cognitively attracted to reasoning one stage above their predominant stage of reasoning. Fourthly, stage movement is motivated by cognitive disequilibrium (Kohlberg, 1981:47-49). One may continue to apply

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these four underlying principles of cognitive development to the notion of fundamentalism.

Firstly, the invariance of stage development as applied to fundamentalism assumes a chronological progression of perspective. However, as already established (and to be further explored), fundamentalism is characterised, and often characterises itself, by adherence to concrete propositions (doctrines). Some forms of faith are prerequisite for the development of other forms of faith.

Secondly, the inability to appreciate reasoning two stages above one's own has important implications for faith. Inasmuch as a faith is a structured response to other there will be potential for stage conflict. Inasmuch as perceptions of content common to all stages differ between stages, there will be confusion. The complexity and diversity of the factors that construct the contents of a particular faith add to this confusion.

Thirdly, cognitive attraction to a higher stage implies (falsely?) the evolutionary superiority of the same. This assumption is contentious to lower stages because some of the contents that fill stages deliberately contradict (conflict with) the principles underlying later stages. The characteristic provincialism of fundamentalism is maintained due its perception of enmity with the world. Separation and enmity between the elect and the lost in Calvinistic fundamentalism is instilled through doctrine. In such divisive religious fundamentalisms there is no common human denominator that serves any binding function - the only unity to be had must be had through common belief. Outside of common belief, there can be no community. This creates a dilemma of transition - the fourth application.

Kohlberg's necessary disequilibrium can be confounded by contents that overtly restrict the accommodation of other contents. The notion of stage progression implies a value judgment. It is inevitable that faith discourses specific to lower levels will form defence mechanisms to arrest transition. These observations will be analysed and applied in more detail in the following chapter.

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This brief review of Kohlberg's philosophical assumptions and the particulars of his theory solidifies the intended understanding of the developmental discourse as applicable to fundamentalism. The remaining sections observe the application of Piagetian developmentalism with an increasingly social emphasis. The following brief review of Erik Erikson's psychosocial-developmental theory reveals dimensions and dynamics unique to developmentalism with a more social emphasis. This review will lead into a similar review of Oser and Gmünder's work on the development of religious judgment and finally to Fowler's work on faith development.

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2.1.4 Psychosocial Development: Erikson

Erik Erikson's psychosocial developmental approach may be reviewed as a bridge in the legacy linking Freudian theory with Fowler's developmental analysis of faith. Erikson's approach reveals a shift away from the biological approach of Freud and the logico-mathematical approach of Piaget, to more social concerns (Miller, 1993:154). Herein lies its relevance to religious fundamentalism, for the developmental study of fundamentalism demands a socially sensitive approach. To reduce a developmental application to Piagetian logico-mathematical concerns would be to ignore the structuring power of contents and culture integral to fundamentalism. The contents operating with culture according to social dynamics represent the phylogenetic structures posited by Oser and Gmünder (1991). Erikson's approach expands the developmental discourse, creating a precedent for Fowler's treatment of faith and this thesis's treatment of fundamentalism.

Born in 1902, Erik Erikson was trained in psychoanalysis by Sigmund and Anna Freud. He embraced the core of Freudian theory including, "psychological structures, the unconscious and the conscious, drives, psychosexual stages, the normal-abnormal continuum, and psychoanalytic methodology" (Miller, 155). He is perhaps best known for his theory of eight psychosocial stages of identity. Erikson described identity as, "an unconscious striving for a continuity of personal character...a criterion for the silent doings of ego synthesis...a maintenance of an inner solidarity with a group's ideals and identity" (In Miller, 159).

In order of emergence, Erikson's stages are: Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority, Identity vs. Role Confusion, Intimacy vs. Isolation, Generativity vs. Self-Absorption, and Integrity vs. Despair. The stages are actually crises to be resolved relative to culture in order to facilitate healthy development. Erikson's understanding of the social impact on crisis resolution underlied his deep-seated social concerns with American society:

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At birth the baby leaves the chemical exchange of the womb for the social exchange system of his [sic] society, where his gradually increasing capabilities meet the opportunities and limitations of his [sic] culture. (Erikson, 1968:92) His work explored this social impact in several cultures including Sioux communities in South Dakota, Yurok communities on the Pacific Coast and communities in mainland .

The utilisation of the developmental discourse for an exploration of social phenomena presents some unique problems. Erikson's psychosocial theory heavily influenced Fowler's (Fowler, 1981) and as such, offers an insight into Fowler's more qualitative social domain. Piaget began his own research with an interest in the domains of religion and morality. However, he assumed such domains under the broader concept of faith, which in the tradition of Kant he believed could sustain little direct empirical analysis. Fowler counters: This latter domain - the domain of faith and of logic of conviction - involves recognizing the role played in faith of the modes of knowing we call ecstatic and imaginative. As is becoming generally recognized, the mind employs the more aesthetically orientated right hemisphere of the brain in these kinds of knowing. To my knowledge none of the Piagetian cognitive-constructivists...have given any significant attention to the bihemispheric, bimodal forms of thought involved in the constitutive-knowing that is faith. (Fowler, 1980:63) Piaget's reticence to pursue development in the domain of faith was well founded given the absence of cognitive logico-mathematical models to extrapolate. Fowler's confidence in the empirical demonstration of such a domain is no doubt enabled by the foundation laid by Piaget and the experimental methodologies of Erikson's psychosociology. It is the theoretical and empirical legacy of both, that make a developmental application to fundamentalism, a possibility.

Having noted Erikson's contribution to the broadening of developmental theory which made Fowler's application more feasible, the focus of the review narrows to examine developmental approaches to religious judgment. Oser and Gmünder's developmental theory of religious judgment leads a step closer to the final discourse applied directly to fundamentalism - Fowler's stages of faith.

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2.1.5 Religious Development: Oser and Gmünder

Oser and Gmünder's Religious Judgement: A Developmental Approach (1991) focusses the developmental discourse to the domain of religious perception. As such, it offers developmental insights applicable to the structures and contents of fundamentalism. The thesis of Oser and Gmünder's work is best summarised using their own words: Different chronological ages lead people to make different religious judgments. Their relationship to the Ultimate obtains different qualities as well. Based on these qualities, religious judgments can be ordered developmentally, i.e., in stages. (1991:9) They define this Ultimate interchangeably as, "God, the Absolute, and the Transcendent" (14). In so doing, they adopt a theory of relativity similar to Fowler's, while affirming the existence of a centre to which relationships are relative: A relational dimension is always implicit in our explanations of God's presence, support, and sustaining power in our . Thus, we are dealing here with subjective perspectives. By examining individual instances we shall abstract the structural commonalties of these individual perspectives. (14) For this abstraction, they receive the inevitable criticism of being objectivist. In response, they uphold somewhat paradoxically, a Kantian and empirical apologetic (5).

Religious judgement is demonstrated through the systemisation and processes of relationship with the Ultimate. This occurs when people: (a) process their life experiences in a religious mode (e.g., in interpretations, conversation, ), (b) assimilate narrative texts (doctrine, proclamation, Bible) in a religious mode, or (c) participate in the life of religious communities (cultus, ). (19) A primary interest of this thesis is how these social factors affect and represent development in instances of fundamentalism. Oser and Gmünder postulate five developmental stages of religious judgment as a result of their empirical and theoretical research.

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They are quick to point out that each stage title is but a "metaphor for the complexities at hand" (68). The stages are, in order of development; (Stage 1) Absolute Heteronomy Orientation (Deus Ex Machina), (Stage 2) "Do Ut Des" Orientation, (Stage 3) Absolute Autonomy Orientation (), (Stage 4) Mediated Autonomy and Salvation-Plan Orientation, (Stage 5) Intersubjective Religious Orientation. Each stage is described in Table 2 which is reproduced from Oser and Gmünder's core work (1991:68).

Table 2. Stages of Religious Judgement

Stage 5: Intersubjective Religious Orientation Complete mediation of being and world. Universality. Unconditional religiousity. Subject occupies a totally religious standpoint, feels no need to be grounded in a plan of salvation or a religious community, etc. Rather subjects experience unconditional and proleptic acceptance. Various forms: unconditional intersubjectivity, unio mystica, boddhi, , etc. Stage 4: Mediated Autonomy and Salvation-Plan Orientation The Ultimate is mediated again via immanence, either as constitutive ground of possibility or as a cypher for the "self". Manifold forms of religiousity, always presuming and no longer questioning ego-autonomy: nature , contemplation, social activism to make God real. However, subjects reject the claim of being able to accomplish all things on their own, they surrender again to an Ultimate. "Images of God" exist, if at all, as symbols only, otherwise as universal principles. Stage 3: Absolute Autonomy Orientation (Deism) The Ultimate is being pushed out of the world, and immanence are separated. are solipsistically autonomous, responsible for the world and their own lives. Frequent rejection of religious and ecclesial authority: "Here I stand, I can do no other!" Formulation of ego-identity, distancing from parental and educational forces. Stage 2: "Do Ut Des" Orientation The Ultimate is still viewed as external and omnipotent, capable of punishing or rewarding. However, now the Ultimate can be influenced. Humans can undertake preventative actions. Limited autonomy. First form of rationalization. Stage 1: Absolute Heteronomy Orientation (Deus Ex Machina) The Ultimate interferes actively and unmediated in the world. Persons merely react. Pressure of expectation. Artificialism. Punctiliousness.

What are the implications of such stages for the characteristics of fundamentalisms? How might fundamentalisms respond? Firstly, analysis begins with the assumption that fundamentalisms represent socially and doctrinally cohesive communities and that such communities generate and perpetuate contents and structures, "formed by and dependent on historical-

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social formation" (Oser and Gmünder, 1991:63). Secondly, analysis is motivated by the belief that: A system of religious development must always be viewed against the background of those processes which facilitate or hamper the development of the personality so that, among other things, it becomes possible to decide "whether a religion contributes to the resolution of the identity-crisis by means of transformation of consciousness onto a new stage, or whether it fosters regression to behavioural patterns which were already considered obsolete". (63) [emphasis added]. Similarly: Cultural development can hamper or sponsor the construction of individual stages while, simultaneously, shaping the content of the stages. A certain content may be inappropriate at a certain time and may therefore fail to yield religious reasoning...the social praxis of meaning-making either sponsors or hampers the religious structures...This means that structures take shape differently in different cultures or civilizations. (94) [emphasis added] Finally, "Depending on their structures, different economic, political, or ideological systems can sponsor either progressive or regressive developments" (152). Exploratory studies into socio-cultural manifestations of stage structures such as the one at hand already exist.

Oser and Gmünder refer to Murray's, Five Stages of Greek Religion and Radding's, Evolution of Medieval Mentalities: A Cognitive-Structural Approach (141). These studies reveal a form of ontogenetic stage structure influence on phylogenetic behaviours and beliefs through institutionalisation. Herein lies a structural developmental assessment of some of the historical religious conflicts of which fundamentalism is an example: Many inconsistencies in the are perhaps often related to the stage of religious development of the persons responsible for shaping that history. (146) Oser and Gmünder then anticipate the nature of this thesis as an exploration into the assumption that socio-cultural and historical movements (such as fundamentalism) may be manifestations of developmental structures: "this assumption would have to be tested hermeneutically by means of intensive literary analysis" (142). Assuming the developmental discourse, the question 63

becomes, how does fundamentalism meet the stage crises of and is its character compatible with later stages of religious judgment? What follows is a brief analysis of fundamentalism in light of a review of Oser and Gmünder's structural developmental contentions. These contentions are italicised.

Fundamentalism and Oser and Gmünder's structural development (a) Social representations (stories, legends, , theological models etc.) cannot fully relieve individuals of interpreting their own situations themselves. This is decreasingly possible with ascending development (62).

The externalisation, deification, and absolute power of authority distinctive to fundamentalism is intended to "relieve individuals of interpreting their own situations themselves". In many fundamentalisms there is an inherent suspicion of the subjectivity of self. In Protestant Fundamentalism, this is often expressed as fallen nature, the utter sinfulness of self and, the corruption of the worldly mind.

Princeton theologian and fundamentalist, J. Gresham Machen expresses clearly and defensively this archetypal view of human nature; "Christianity is founded on the Bible, Liberalism on the other hand is founded upon the shifting emotions of sinful men" (in Boone, 1989:23). Hence, the developing autonomy of individual interpretation conflicts with the Protestant Fundamentalist concept of a fallen nature and corrupt mind. This stand against autonomy is characteristic of other fundamentalisms.

Almost all observers of fundamentalisms note their characteristic placement of authority in text and the literal hermeneutic they most readily defend: In the most general sense, however, any particular fundamentalism legitimates its existence and world-view by reference, among other things, to a corpus of sacred writings, the belief in whose veracity constitutes a prime test of faith. (Caplan, 1987:14) The Christian Bible, the Jewish rabbinical law as authoritative interpretation of the Torah, the Sikh Guru Granth Sahib, the Tamil Agamic canons, and the 64

Muslim and the Sunna, are but a few examples of texts at the centre of faiths with fundamentalist expressions. While the texts vary, the fundamentalist hermeneutic is characteristically literal and text-based. The hermeneutic autonomy of the individual is discouraged in fundamentalism. Its concern with coherence and uniformity coupled with the primacy of text censures multiple - at least in principle.

In Protestant Fundamentalism this authority is evident in the formal statements of discourse such as inerrancy and infallibility. These doctrines are possibly more familiar in the popular cliches of the fundamentalist discourse: God said it, I believe it, that settles it, taking the Bible literally, and references to the Bible as, The Word of God, The Living Word, and The Holy Bible. The text centred approach of fundamentalism creates a problem that is manifest, though largely unadmitted in fundamentalist circles. The problem concerns the obvious divisions within fundamentalism all claiming to base their true belief on a literal Biblical foundation. The authority and text centredness at once given to the Bible, results in bitter accounts for such divisions. Within such division it does not suffice to admit that the differences result from the relative stages, emphases, or experiences of the readers – for this would seemingly deny the authoritative power of text.

Instead, fellow fundamentalists with different interpretations are ostracised as at least wrong, incorrect in their understanding of Scripture, or prooftexting, and at worst, deceived by the false teachers of Satan (a phrase familiar to the author's own experience).

The cumulative effect of such a hermeneutic and perception of division is that fundamentalisms have a tendency to invest the authority of Scripture in the interpreters of that Scripture - so long as those interpreters claim, not to be interpreting, but telling it like it is. The uncritical following (through trust in the claims to divine authority) of guru-like televangelists and fundamentalist apologists evidences this dynamic. The more this culture of vicarious interpretation is reinforced, the more the lay fundamentalist is relieved from the

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use of critical interpretive epistemologies that would test or triangulate the claims of such authorities.

As Oser and Gmünder note, uncritical, reliant, and externalised interpretation "is decreasingly possible with ascending development" (62). By extension, fundamentalisms characterised by the above hermeneutic arrest development into more autonomously verified interpretations.

(b) In Stage 1 children assume that everything is guided, led, and steered by external forces (69).

While this assumption is partly recapitulated at later stages, it is identified in Stage 1 as the non-comprehension of human agency or natural mechanism in cause and effect relationships. Protestant Fundamentalism tends to reinforce this view of a transcendent God as the ultimate cause of everything. This again is evidenced in several levels of popular discourse. The first, is the popularity of fundamentalist literature interpreting current world events in light of a divine plan. Boone (1989) offers insight by examining fundamentalist's literal interpretations of Rev. 9.13-19. Hal Lindsey, author of, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) writes: The phenomena by which this destruction of life will take place is given: it will be by fire, smoke (or air pollution), and brimstone (or melted earth). The thought may have occurred to you that this is strikingly similar to the phenomena associated with thermonuclear war. In fact, many Bible expositors believe that this is an accurate first-century description of a twentieth century thermonuclear war. (In Boone, 43) Boone quotes populist evangelist Leon Bates on the same passage: [Those destroyed] will be killed by the FIRE, SMOKE and PROJECTILES (missiles?) being issued out of the vehicles upon which the army is riding (Rev. 9:17,18). Could John have been trying to describe modern, missile launching TANKS? (In Boone, 34) The developmentalist concern is not with the content of interpretation, or even the accuracy or correctness of interpretation of these particular passages - rather, the concern is with the hermeneutic tendency toward literalisation and

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the translation of events in terms of an external divine cause as a structural indicator.

The latter is evidenced in the discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism in relation to more mundane non-biblical events. Fundamentalists regularly interpret the minutiae of life in terms of external cause. The word, Godincidence is a common part of some Protestant Fundamentalist discourses. Such examples, sourced from the author’s observations of Protestant Fundamentalist churches in North Queensland include the attributions of: • The economic and property devastation caused by Cyclone Winifred in the late 1980s in North Queensland to "a judgment of the Lord on the sinfulness of the people of Cairns". Similarly, the likening of "God's judgment through Winifred" to "The Almighty's judgment on Darwin on his birthday [Christmas Day]...using Cyclone Tracy as punishment for the sinfulness of the people of Darwin who secularised his holy day". • The deviation from a course of contact with Townsville of Cyclone Joy to "a wall of prayer erected by Townsville's Christians". • A flat tyre caused by an "angel of the Lord" in order to create an opportunity for the of a passing motorist. • Traffic lights being green at an unlikely intersection as indication that a dating relationship was the "will of the Lord". Again, it is empirically impossible to validate or deny such attributions. What is significant, is the selectivity with which they are applied and the dominance of the structure that inspires them.

Whenever an event seems incongruous with an act of God, various protective mechanisms intervene. These mechanisms include deliberate silence about the incongruous event, a refusal to process the event in religious terms (compartmentalised hermeneutic), and the appeal to cliches that critically bypass the event such as, "the Lord works in mysterious ways", "His ways are higher than ours", "like Job, who are we to question the Lord?" and "the Lord makes all things work together for good". The hermeneutic is reinforced by Scriptural (especially Old Testament) accounts of God working in human affairs. From the Israelite’s victories and losses in battle to the dew around

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Gideon's fleece, God is perceived as the immediate cause.

There are deep epistemological issues underlying such claims, and as Oser and Gmünder argue, the causal effect of God may be recapitulated at later stages. What distinguishes the early stage from the late stage is the understanding of the God-cause as exclusively transcendent; the uncritical application of the God-cause; the compartmentalised application of the God cause; and the provincial application of the God cause - i.e. while the fundamentalist's good fortune is the work of God, the secularist's good fortune is the worldly rewards of evil. Conversely, the fundamentalist's misfortune is the oppression of the Devil while the secularist's misfortune is the righteous judgment of the Lord. Such externalised and compartmentalised attribution for situations reveals a lack of reversibility, a punishment-obedience orientation, and a mythic-literal hermeneutic characteristic of early developmental structures.

(c) In Stage 1-2 children believe that there is a simple, direct, absolute formulaic connection between human action and Ultimate action or reaction (71).

This point warrants an expansion of the previous observations concerning the attribution of life events to moral behaviour and correctness of belief. Consider the relative stage responses offered by Oser and Gmünder to their Paul Dilemma. The significant content of the dilemma is self-evident (interviewer's remarks italicised): Stage 1. Is this accident related to the fact that Paul did not keep his promise to God? Why or why not? Answer: "Yes". Why? "God simply punished him." Why does God punish people? "He punishes them when they don't obey him." Why must we obey God? "If we don't obey him, he punishes us." What is God telling us with his punishment? "That he doesn't like what we have done." (girl, age 7) Stage 4. Is this accident related to the fact that Paul did not keep his promise to God? Why or why not? Answer: "I don't think so. I can't quite resolve the problem of the accident, but personally I do not believe that those who are bad or evil are being punished by God. That is so much like the Old Testament; but the Old Testament also knows of many who were bad or evil and yet are doing

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well. It shows that often precisely those who keep God's commandments have no success while those who disobey are successful." (male, aged 32) (Oser and Gmünder, 70,76) It is the Stage 4 respondent's reversibility (a mark of Piagetian development), that makes him reticent to ascribe to the punishment-reward attribution of the Stage 1 respondent. Interestingly, his response reveals some dissonance in his understanding of the God of the Old Testament. As noted previously, the Protestant Fundamentalist hermeneutic seems to be encouraged by the prevalent punishment-reward attributions in the Old Testament. Perhaps this is an example of a phylogenetic tradition affecting ontogenetic judgment.

(d) In Stage 2 incidents of bad luck are viewed as actions by the Ultimate in direct correspondence with the quality of , renunciations, and , etc. (71). (e) In Stage 2 persons can talk, bargain, interact with the Ultimate and even placate it (71). (f) In Stage 3 persons begin to negate that they might be able to influence the Ultimate (73).

Observations (d) to (f) continue to reflect characteristics of fundamentalism. The perception of the “actions of the Ultimate in correspondence with the quality of sacrifices, renunciations, and prayers” reflects a distinctively Old Testament hermeneutic. Understood as such, the quality of the Priest's sacrifices (indeed the very need to at all) brings God's wrath, "When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong?" (Mal 1:8). A Stage 1 interpretation of Malachi understands God's wrath as directly related to the state of the sacrifice. A later stage interpretation perceives the sacrifice as representing the intentions and desires of the priests. Does fundamentalism reflect either stage?

Fundamentalism has been accused of embracing the symbol without acknowledging the symbolised. Liberalism has been accused of trying to embrace the symbolised without the necessary symbols. Perhaps both, where true, represent stage structures before the transcendent-immanent, concrete- 69

abstract reconciliations of Oser and Gmünder's final stages. Fundamentalism's characterisation as an early stage manifestation is evidenced by its lack of tolerance for, and consideration of, synonymous symbols. Hence, there are significant divisions between Protestant Fundamentalists as to which instruments should be used in worship, whether hymns or choruses are truer worship, what clothing, haircuts, headwear, or language is acceptable.

There is great truth in the recognition of the power of such symbols and it would be foolish to think that the symbolic power is unfounded. However, what distinguishes fundamentalism is a lack of perceptive ability to realise that symbolic power is often dynamic - symbols lose their power; what they symbolise may change. There is also the inability to recognise that what may appear as a symbol to one, is not perceived as such or intended, by another. For example; to enforce Paul's hair regulations, instructions on head coverings, or arguably his instructions on women teaching, and to apply these standards as desirable standards for all peoples in the present day, is to reveal a very early stage perception of symbolic function. It is a perception unfortunately reinforced in Protestant Fundamentalism, by lay conceptions of inerrancy and infallibility, and the belief that only a single interpretation of a text is possible or desirable. Such understandings are congruent with Oser and Gmünder's early stages of development. The authority of text and interpreter and the coercion to conformity in fundamentalisms tend to maintain the equilibrium of these stage structures.

(g) Stage 3-4 results in a denial of the Stage 3 concept of human self- determination and autonomy and a consciousness of the simultaneity of transcendent and immanent forces. (75) (h) In Stage 4 the Ultimate becomes immanent in the sense that it is identified as the condition for all decision making and actions. (76) (i) In Stage 4 the Ultimate appears symbolically in nature, culture, and human capacities for love. (76) (j) In Stage 4 God does not actively intervene in history; rather, as the ground of the world and of human existence God constitutes the condition for human

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action (76).

Oser and Gmünder's Stage 3 equilibrium and Stage 3-4 transition offer invaluable insight into a distinctive of religious fundamentalism - aggressive opposition to, and demonisation of secular . The fear of the secular, its demonisation, and the resultant extremism and separatism of fundamentalism may be understood in terms of Oser and Gmünder's Stage 3-4 descriptions. Similarly, the antagonism and dismissiveness of toward fundamentalism is understandable in terms of the Stage 2-3 transition.

To recall, Stage 2 perceives the Ultimate as external, omnipotent and intervening in human affairs. It is a stage of "limited autonomy” (Oser and Gmünder, 68). Stage 3 rejects the intervention of the Ultimate, becoming more autonomous, or in a religious sense - deistic. It becomes possible in this stage to, "postulate consciously an atheistic worldview" (73). It could be contended that the fundamentalism enacted in Stage 2, the or deism enacted in Stage 3, and the recapitulated sense of Ultimate in Stage 4 are mutually definitive and reactionary in the social arena because they are understood exclusively rather than developmentally.

The atheism or deism of Stage 3 is marked by a tendency to characterise fundamentalists as foolish and ignorant. The rejection of previously held fundamentalisms may be vehement and total after transition (Babinski, 1991). Perhaps this arises from a feeling of having moved on from “religious myths and fairytales” into the truer epistemology of science and reason. Conversely, fundamentalists perceive the new autonomous understandings of Stage 3 as arrogant, relying on human wisdom, and godless (Schaeffer, 1968).

The security of identity or equilibrium of Stage 2 is grounded in transcendent authority - it knows no other. The autonomy of a Stage 3 participant presents a crisis for the participant of Stage 2. The crisis is expressed in the incredulity that identity can exist in self alone. This is partly because there is no understanding of God within self or through self, beyond the symbols of the

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immediate community - the classic Us vs. Them distinction. Hence, the fundamentalist fear of "whirling in a vortex of nihilism" or "swimming in a sea of subjectivity" should they venture beyond a transcendent God-dependency (Boone, 1989:23).

The recapitulated sense of the Ultimate in Stage 4 is quite different to the sense of the Ultimate in Stage 2. Because of the discernment between symbol and symbolised enabled in Stage 3, the remythologising of the Ultimate in symbolic form may take on new symbols. This could account for a diversity and hybridisation of religious expressions evident in Stage 4. The fundamentalist, unable to appreciate the integrity within diversity, attributes alternative discourses of belief to natural sin and Satanic delusion using such prooftexts as 1 Timothy 4:1-2: The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by . Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. The late Princeton fundamentalist, Dr. Machen is criticised on this point by Horace Bridges, in The God of Fundamentalism (1925): And he [Machen] never hesitates about the sensibilites of his opponents where anything that he regards as truth is involved. He sneers at what he considers the falsity and ineffectuality of their teaching, and, when they are ministers of the traditional churches, does not scruple to impugn their honesty and accuse them of holding their positions by means of false pretences. (33) The fundamentalist’s demonisation of articulated atheism and recapitulated theisms is by no means restricted to a Protestant version. It is a definitive characteristic of all fundamentalisms.

Marty and Appleby make this observation in the first volume of their comparative project, Fundamentalisms Observed (1991): Fundamentalists name, dramatize, and even mythologize their enemies...The West [for Muslim fundamentalists] is "the Great Satan"; the American Occupation caused many Japanese to be possessed by "evil spirits"; secular Zionism is a cosmic precursor to revolutionary messianic . (820) The fundamentalist recognises heresy but rarely seeks to understand it or

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engage it with any dialectical intention or empathy. Even the most unlearned fundamentalist may disrespect with the appearance of absolute certainty, teachings of a discourse, any part of which has been demonised.

In the author's own experience, the child may readily write off Darwin, Huxley, or Dawkins as a liar. At a national conference for Christian teachers the author presented a paper on The Implications of Developmental Theory for Christian Education (Unpublished, 1999). While some were prepared to discuss the notion that children of different ages might perceive the fundamental truths of Christianity differently, others immediately associated the paper with psychology and would not entertain discussion. Rather, they said that such discussion could be dangerous. Psychology is a demonised word in fundamentalist circles. Words and labels are triggers that close the gates of conversation. Peter Cameron, somewhat unflatteringly, labels this tendency protective stupidity and quotes from Orwell's 1984: The first and simplest stage...which can be taught even to young children, is called...crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to [the system], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of heading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. (1995:18) It is important to note that this is not a tendency unique to fundamentalism. It may be reversed in application. It is however, a characteristic of a system of thought; a total ideology, that admits no other and accommodates no other (at least consciously). Such a characteristic prevents the autonomy and unity in diversity structured at later stages of Oser and Gmünder's model of development of religious judgment. These structured behaviours are further restricted by fundamentalism's characteristic separatism.

The fundamentalist child learns very quickly who are friends and who are enemies. The distinction is made using belief, not practice. Hence, the ease with which hatred is perpetuated - it requires no understanding, only identification at the level of belief. In some situations this may mean that a 73

Catholic hates a Protestant, a Jew hates and Arab, a Sunni hates a Shiite. Hate is not a very academic word but few others can serve to express the enmity which fundamentalisms are able to generate. The fundamentalist maintains a total ideology; there is no need for an exchange of learning or perspective. There is also little need for growth or development, except in the accumulation (which does not constitute development in the structural sense) of propositional knowledge. Development is arrested where it is not sought. Fundamentalism's over-emphasis on propositional knowledge tends to neglect the developmental process that structures this knowledge. This is both cause and effect of the structures underlying Oser and Gmünder's early stages of religious judgment.

(k) Different developmental states need to be taken into account in the case of texts and their analyses. (146) (l) Theology needs to contain a developmental theory of religious consciousness, thus enabling the analysis of historical manifestations of religious consciousness according to their respective structure and level. (148) (m) The issues with which theology is concerned cannot be transmitted as factual information. (149) (n) Moral theology must learn to interpret the stages of religious judgment from the perspective of morality. (150) (o) Fundamental theological statements should be constituted so that they are structurally plausible and reproducible. (150) (p) Events in the personal life history of great theologians must be included from the ontogenetic perspective whenever attempts are made to understand and interpret the development of a certain approach. (150) (q) Biblical should examine individual text-formations as to their inherent structure of judgment, since it may be assumed that the levels of the structure of the religious judgments in the biblical texts may vary substantially due to the differences in context, audience, and social forms (151).

These statements concern developmental sensitivity in the three situations most significant to religious community; of Scripture, authoritative exposition

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of Scripture (teaching and sermons), and the construction of theological concepts. Developmental sensitivity is the recognition that: Whatever is said can no longer be treated without taking into account the of the structural developmental approach. Even in the simplest situations, where, for example, people view biblical scenes in the stained glass windows of a cathedral, listen to a devotional or sermon on TV, observe or participate in a baptism, listen to the interpretation of a text, discuss the question of in religious education - the same particular content is always assimilated differently, according to the various stages. (Oser and Gmünder, 1991:149) What assumptions and practices of fundamentalism restrict developmental sensitivity?

Fundamentalism is observed as having four significant characteristics that serve to undermine developmental sensitivity; (1) a selectively literal hermeneutic (Boone, 1991; Barr, 1981; Strozier, 1994), (2) a closed and absolute system of logic (Marty and Appleby, 1991; Cameron, 1995), (3) a tendency to attribute a divine mandate-like authority to its leaders (Boone, 1991; Cohen, 1988; and Babinski, 1995; Vogt, 1995), and (4) a content based education of the young.

Development, fundamentalism and The literal hermeneutic has already been discussed to an extent and will be subject to further discussion later. For now, it will suffice to draw some implications for development. The fundamentalist defence of the literal sense is a difficult issue because its application is selective. Barr argues that fundamentalists, though claiming "to take the Bible literally" actually change their hermeneutic to preserve inerrancy: "In order to avoid imputing error to the Bible, [fundamentalists] twist and turn back and forward between literal and non-literal interpretation" (1981:40).

Boone argues that Barr's comments are more applicable to the academic fundamentalism he studied and not the popular hermeneutic that maintains literal readings in spite of apparent contradictions. For example, Barr asserted that only extreme fundamentalists believe in a literal six-day interpretation of

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Genesis, implying that this was a minority view. In a foreword to the second edition of Fundamentalism (1983) Barr notes: I remarked on p. 92 and elsewhere that this [opposition to evolution or non- literal interpretations] has now receded from the scene. I now think this is not so certain. Anti-evolutionary theories, maintaining that the variety of species was directly so created by God, a view sometimes known as '', are more prevalent and influential than I then realized. (xii) To define literal, Boone recalls phrases from the fundamentalist discourse including, "common sense, plain, obvious, natural meaning" (1989:39-40). The notion of common sense is problematised in light of the multitude of competing Bible-based fundamentalisms.

Summarily, the developmental concern is one of literary criticism between the certainty and security of absolute (literal) readings and the uncertainty and insecurity of multiple (symbolic) readings. The opposition between these two is problematised further by the concept of inerrancy. As long as fundamentalism characterises itself as interpreting the Bible literally it will restrict exploration with, and thus development of other interpretative models. It will be forced to use such models only as a reaction to Biblical criticism to defend inerrancy. The characteristic absolute certainty of the fundamentalist hermeneutic does unnecessary damage to its own cause when it is irrefutably challenged by scientific discovery. Time reveals that the fundamentalists of today were the liberals of yesterday (Babinski, 1995). Maintaining an absolutely closed system of logic with absolute certainty (blind faith) will either stunt development or make it unnecessarily difficult in the process.

Development, fundamentalism and authority The third point concerns the authority of interpretation. Herein lies an interesting point of distinction between Protestant, Catholic and Islamic fundamentalism. While lay Protestant Fundamentalists are more likely to apply a common sense, or obvious interpretation to Scripture, Catholic and Muslim fundamentalists give more direct authority to the mandated interpreters of Scripture. In some forms of Islamic Fundamentalism, interpretation of the Quran is considered the sole responsibility of scholars. It was argued earlier 76

that Protestant Fundamentalism reflects such allegiance to authority for interpretation - though it is certainly not such an overt or formal part of the belief. It would be far too simplistic to associate fundamentalism with externalised authority on this basis. The fundamentalisms of Catholicism and and Sunni and Shiite reflect a more complex dynamic in relation to structural perceptions of authority.

Piaget (1926) and Oser and Gmünder (1991) both associate early stage structures with the tendency to unrealistically project authority and power onto parents, and later - God. This deification of authority is often rejected when development challenges previously held notions (Oser and Gmünder, 1991:71). It may manifest as an adolescent challenge to parental authority or rebellion against the God images of childhood. However, the need for authority is perhaps never lost according to structural development. Its epistemological sources develop from the external to the internal, from the other to the self, and eventually to a unity of both (Fowler, 1981).

Possibly, there is a historical cycle that reflects this ontogenetic process. Protestantism began as a rejection of Catholic papal authority in favour of a purely Scriptural authority (sola Scriptura). Sunni and Shiite Islam are similarly divided, "The Sunnis consider the Koran infallible, while the Shiites place infallibility in a man, the Imam who is sinless and has been considered as man- God" (Dicks, Mennill, and Santor, 1973:281). Protestant and Muslim revivals alike, are often identified by the rejection of complacent submission to positions and structures of authority and return to basic principles of the past. Over time, the leaders and structures of revival may outlive their context and the cycle repeats. Is this a result of the interaction between the ontogenetic development of new generations under the phylogenetic structures of the past?

Development and authority: The identification of fundamentalist models of authority in diverse religious traditions reveals problems of definition. John Voll (in Marty & Appleby 1991:350) examines the Sunni revivalist movement of Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-

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Wahhab (1703-92). Wahhabism provides an interesting example for an analysis of the dimension of authority in fundamentalism. Voll writes of Idn 'Abd al-Wahhab's socio-religious context: However, the religious life of local tribes and townspeople had become involved with non-Islamic practices, including the worship of the tombs of Muslim saints, , and . Despite the Hanbali reputation for strictness, the Muslim learned establishment tended to tolerate the superstitions of the masses rather than cause social tension and conflict...Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab also attacked the religio-intellectual establishment of his time. He opposed the blind acceptance of authority in religious matters and criticized the ulama (learned men) who had taken the medieval systems of Islam as the final word and had thus eliminated any role for the independent rethinking of the religious tradition. Islamic fundamentalists have, like Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, advocated ijtihad, the use of informed independent judgment in interpreting and applying the basic sources of Islam, rather than simply adhering to the inherited interpretations of the great medieval scholars. (349-350) Wahhabism, as the movement was named, challenges the definition of fundamentalism. Before examining this definition it is worth clarifying the characteristics of Muslim revivalism defined as fundamentalist. Youssef Choueiri (1990) identifies such revivalism as: 1. The return to original Islam as the religion of the oneness of God (tawhid). This led to the insistence on purifying Islam of pagan customs and foreign accretions. A pronounced hostility was thus displayed towards innovations and traditions, particularly the excessive veneration of saints, the practice of magic and association with unbelievers. 2. The advocacy of independent reasoning in matters of legal judgments (ijtihad), coupled with an adhorrence of blind imitation (taqlid). 3. The necessity of fleeing (hijra) the territories dominated by polytheists and heathens...Hence, the world was divided into two mutually exclusive geographical units: the abode of unbelief (dar al-kuhr) and the House of Islam (dar al-Islam). 4. The fervent belief in one single leader as either the embodiment of the 'renewer' and just imam or as the Expected Mahdi. (23-24) Wahhabism is in some ways the archetypal fundamentalist revival and in others, quite atypical.

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There is a very significant body of literature that defines fundamentalism in terms of the very things Wahhabism sought to reject. Cameron (1995), Vogt (1995), Cohen (1988), Winell (1993), Babinski (1995), and Boone (1989) all characterise fundamentalism as institutional, repressive of independent thought, and reliant on unquestionable authority. On the one hand Wahhabism claims to reject such things - on the other, it necessitates them by promoting original Islam as a total ideology, by repressing contaminating beliefs, by separation from unbelievers (physical and mental) and militant struggle against them, and by the fervent belief in one single leader (Choueiri, 1990:23-24). The contradistinction reveals subtle differences in the emphases used to define fundamentalism. Emphases vary between militancy and extremism, authority dependency, and contents of faith.

Summary It is possible to summarise this final section in light of Oser and Gmünder's development assertions. Fundamentalism is defined herein by its tendency to insist that the ideal is revealed exclusively in a particular. The particular (by definition) is only accessible through particular language and tradition. As such, the particular is deemed to be static [(m) The issues with which theology is concerned cannot be transmitted as factual information. (149)]. This is a mark of fundamentalism; that because the truth is held as static propositional knowledge predicating action it is accessible to all who would seek the truth i.e. be willing to accept the knowledge. A developmental approach problematises the notion of static salvific propositional knowledge [(o) Fundamental theological statements should be constituted so that they are structurally plausible and reproducible. (150)]. For this very reason, developmentalism itself, cannot claim to be a readily accessible truth - nor does it need to. The stakes for accepting or rejecting it are not measured by any fundamentalist criteria: eternal destination, earthly , and social rejection of unbelievers.

Thus ends the review of Oser and Gmünder's developmental theory of religious judgment. However, a final word is appropriate to justify a transition to Fowler

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as a continuing focus of structural development. Oser and Gmünder criticise Fowler's theory on the grounds that: Instead of emphasising the specifically religious, he presents a conglomerate of stage conceptions of different sources (logic, role-taking, moral judgment, form of world coherence, locus of authority, symbolic interaction, etc) which only in combination make it possible to experience the ways of the world based on faith. (1991:44) This is a weakness because the combination of so many areas makes faith very difficult to identify in practice and very difficult to examine in theory. However, Fowler recognises that something is lost if the phenomenon he seeks to explore is overly compartmentalized and artificially organised. For this reason, Fowler's Seven Aspects of Faith provides a powerful model for an analysis of a holistic fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is a total ideology. It permeates all aspects of life. It is intimately concerned with each of the Seven Aspects and yet it defines itself holistically as a faith. As such, Fowler's Aspects reflect the self- claimed nature and scope of fundamentalism.

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2.1.6 Faith Development: James Fowler

James Fowler outlines his theory of faith development in Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (1981). He postulates six developmental stages of human faith following the Undifferentiated Faith of infancy: Intuitive-Projective Faith, Mythic-Literal Faith, Synthetic-Conventional Faith, Individuative-Reflective Faith, Conjunctive Faith, and Universalising Faith. Stage determination is dependent upon seven aspects: Form of Logic, Perspective Taking, Form of Moral Judgment, Bounds of Social Awareness, Locus of Authority, Form of World Coherence, and Symbolic Function (see Table 3).

James Fowler's Seven Aspects of Faith provide a useful starting point for an application of developmental structuring tendencies to fundamentalism. These aspects offer a synthesis of observed structuring tendencies across the life- span. In effect, they describe the cumulative interpretations of empirical and conceptual research in psychosocial human development. Fowler draws specifically on the developmental research and theory of Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Erik Erikson, Jane Lovinger, Robert Selman, and Daniel Levinson. The following discussion of fundamentalism is structured according to the aspects as described in Table 3 (Table reproduced from Fowler, 1981:244-5). No doubt, these aspects will be redefined and reconceptualised by further empirical research. For the purposes of this paper, Fowler's aspects provide a conceptual link between existing developmental structures and observed fundamentalist beliefs and behaviours.

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Table 3. Fowler's Seven Aspects of Faith

Aspect A. Form of B. C. Moral D.Social E. Locus of F. World G. Logic Perspective Judgement Awareness Authority Coherence Symbolic Taking Function Stage Preoperational Rudimentary Punishment- Family, Attachment/ Episodic Magical- I empathy reward primal, others dependence numinous (egocentric) relationships. Size, power, visible symbols of authority II Concrete Simple Instrumental "Those like Incumbents of Narrative- One- Operational Perspective hedonism us" (in authority roles, dramatic dimensional; taking (reciprocal familial, ethic, salience increased by literal fairness) racial, class personal relatedness and religious terms) III Early Formal Mutual Interpersonal Composite of Consensus of valued Tacit system, Symbols Operations interpersonal expectations and groups in groups and in felt meanings multi- concordance which one has personally worthy symbolically dimensional: interpersonal representatives of mediated, evocative relationships belief- value traditions globally held power inheres in symbol IV Formal Operations Mutual, with self- Societal Ideologically One's own judgement Explicit Symbols (Dichotomizing) selected group perspective, compatible as informed by a self- system, separated or class Reflective communities ratified ideological conceptually from (societal) relativism or with perspective. mediated, symbolised. class-biased congruence to Authorities and norms clarity about Translated Universalism self-chosen must be congruent boundaries (reduced) to norms and with this. and inner Ideations. insights connections of Evocative system power inheres in meaning conveyed by symbols V Formal Operations Mutual with Prior to society, Extends Dialectical joining of Multisystemic Postcritical (Dialectical) groups, classes principled higher beyond class judgement- symbolic and rejoining of and traditions law (universal norms and experience processes conceptual irreducible "other" than and critical) interests. with reflective claims mediation symbolic one's own Disciplined of others and of power and ideological various expressions of ideational vulnerability to cumulative human meaning. "truths" and wisdom Evocative "claims" of power outgroups and inherent in the other reality in and traditions beyond symbol and in the power of unconscious processes in the self VI Formal Operations Mutual, with the Loyalty to being Identification In a personal Unitive Evocative (Synthetic) commonwealth with the judgement informed actuality felt power of of being species. by the experiences and symbols Transnarcissis and truths of previous participated actualized tic love of stages, purified of unity of "One through being egoic striving, and beyond many" unification of linked by disciplined reality to the mediated by principle of being symbols and the self

The general poles of developmental transition are ego-centric and universal, literal and symbolic, concrete and formal. Each stage represents a period of equilibrium along such continuums. The movement to each new stage is characterised by: - a new degree of reflective liberation with respect to the use of reason in faith (form of logic). - an augmented capacity for accuracy in taking the perspective of others and in balancing their perspectives with a newly decentrated grasp of one's own 82

outlook (role taking). - as in Kohlberg's theory, a qualitatively new, more complex and comprehensive logic for moral reasoning (form of moral judgment). - a widened, more inclusive accounting for the interests, stories and visions of others in the course of composing and maintaining one's own normative perspectives (bounds of social awareness). - a more self-reliant and increasingly objective accounting for the warrants and justifications of one's faith outlook and for its consequences in life structure and patterns of commitment (locus of authority). - a qualitatively new degree of self-responsibility for the forming system of images, values and stories that constitute the unity and coherence of one's meaning world (form of world coherence). - a qualitative increase in choice, awareness and commitment regarding the symbols and representations, which express, evoke and renew one's faith (symbolic functioning). (Fowler: 1981:300) While Fowler uses the Aspects as dimensions of convenience he summarises each stage of faith holistically. The following italicised summaries of each of the faith stages are reproduced from Fowler's (1981) Stages of Faith. The primary intention of this thesis is to apply Fowler's descriptive structures to the concept of fundamentalism.

Stage I Intuitive-Projective faith (Fowler, 1981:133-134) is the fantasy-filled, imitative phase in which the child can be powerfully and permanently influenced by examples, moods, actions and stories of the visible faith of primally related adults.

The stage most typical of the child of three to seven, it is marked by a relative fluidity of thought patterns. The child is continually encountering novelties for which no stable operations of knowing have been formed. The imaginative processes underlying fantasy are unrestrained and uninhibited by logical thought. In league with forms of knowing dominated by perception, imagination in this stage is extremely productive of long-lasting images and feelings (positive and negative) that later, more stable and self-reflective valuing and thinking will have to order and sort out. This is the stage of first self-awareness. The self-aware child is egocentric as regards the perspectives of others. Here 83

we find first awarenesses of death and sex and of the strong taboos by which cultures and families insulate those powerful areas.

The gift or emergent strength of this stage is the birth of imagination, the ability to unify and grasp the experience-world in powerful images and as presented in stories that register the child's intuitive understandings and feelings toward the ultimate conditions of existence.

The dangers in this stage arise from the possible possession of the child's imagination by unrestrained images of terror and destructiveness, or from the witting or unwitting exploitation of her or his imagination in the reinforcement of taboos and moral or doctrinal expectations.

The main factor precipitating transition to the next stage is the emergence of concrete operational thinking. Affectively, the resolution of Oedipal issues or their submersion in latency are important accompanying factors. At the heart of the transition is the child's growing concern to know how things are and to clarify for him- or herself the bases of distinctions between what is real and what only seems to be.

Stage 2 Mythic-Literal faith (Fowler, 1981:149-150) is the stage in which the person begins to take on for him- or herself the stories, beliefs and observances that symbolize belonging to his or her community. Beliefs are appropriated with literal interpretations, as are moral rules and attitudes. Symbols are taken as one-dimensional and literal in meaning. In this stage the rise of concrete operations leads to the curbing and ordering of the previous stage's imaginative composing of the world. The episodic quality of Intuitive-Projective faith gives way to a more linear, narrative construction of coherence and meaning. Story becomes the major way of giving unity and value to experience. This is the faith stage of the school child (though we sometimes find the structures dominant in adolescents and in adults). Marked by increased accuracy in taking the perspective of other persons, those in Stage 2 compose a world based on reciprocal fairness and an immanent justice based on reciprocity. The actors in

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their cosmic stories are anthropomorphic. They can be affected deeply and powerfully by symbolic and dramatic materials and can describe in endlessly detailed narrative what has occurred. They do not, however, step back from the flow of stories to formulate reflective, conceptual meanings. For this stage the meaning is both carried and trapped in the narrative.

The new capacity or strength in this stage is the rise of narrative and the emergence of story, drama and myth as ways of finding and giving coherence to experience.

The limitations of literalness and an excessive reliance upon reciprocity as a principle for constructing an ultimate environment can result either in an overcontrolling, stilted perfectionism or "works righteousness" or in their opposite, an abasing sense of badness embraced because of mistreatment, neglect or the apparent disfavor of significant others.

A factor initiating transition to Stage 3 is the implicit clash or contradictions in stories that leads to reflection on meanings. The transition to formal operational thought makes such reflection possible and necessary. Previous literalism breaks down; new "cognitive conceit" (Elkind) leads to disillusionment with previous teachers and teachings. Conflicts between authoritative stories (Genesis on creation versus evolutionary theory) must be faced. The emergence of mutual interpersonal perspective taking ("I see you seeing me; I see me as you see me; I see you seeing me seeing you.") creates the need for a more personal relationship with the unifying power of the ultimate environment.

In Stage 3 Synthetic-Conventional faith, (Fowler, 1981:172-173) a person's experience of the world now extends beyond the family. A number of spheres demand attention: family, school or work, peers, street society and media, and perhaps religion. Faith must provide a coherent orientation in the midst of that more complex and diverse range of involvements. Faith must synthesize values and information; it must provide a basis for identity and outlook.

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Stage 3 typically has its rise and ascendancy in adolescence, but for many adults it becomes a permanent place of equilibrium. It structures the ultimate environment in interpersonal terms. Its images of unifying value and power derive from the extension of qualities experienced in personal relationships. It is a "conformist" stage in the sense that it is acutely tuned to the expectations and judgments of significant others and yet does not have a sure enough grasp on its own identity and autonomous judgment to construct and maintain an independent perspective. While beliefs and values are deeply felt, they typically are tacitly held - the person "dwells" in them and in the meaning world they mediate. But there has not been occasion to step outside them to reflect on or examine them explicitly or systematically. At Stage 3 a person has an "ideology," a more or less consistent clustering of values and beliefs, but he or she has not objectified it for examination and in a sense is unaware of having it. Differences of outlook with others are experienced as differences in "kind" of person. Authority is located in the incumbents of traditional authority role (if perceived as personally worthy) or in the consensus of a valued, face-to-face group.

The emergent capacity of this stage is the forming of a personal myth-the myth of one's own becoming in identity and faith, incorporating one's past and anticipated future in an image of the ultimate environment unified by characteristics of personality.

The dangers or deficiencies in this stage are twofold. The expectations and evaluations of others can be so compellingly internalized (and sacralized) that later autonomy of judgment and action can be jeopardized; or interpersonal betrayals can give rise either to nihilistic despair about a personal principle of ultimate being or to a compensatory intimacy with God unrelated to mundane relations. Factors contributing to the breakdown of Stage 3 and to readiness for transition may include: serious clashes or contradictions between valued authority sources; marked changes, by officially sanctioned leaders, or policies or practices previously deemed sacred and unbreachable (for example, in the

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Catholic church changing the mass from to the vernacular, or no longer requiring abstinence from meat on Friday); the encounter with experiences or perspectives that lead to critical reflection on how one's beliefs and values have formed and changed, and on how "relative" they are to one's particular group or background. Frequently the experience of "leaving home"--emotionally or physically, or both--precipitates the kind of examination of self, background, and lifeguiding values that gives rise to stage transition at this point.

The movement from Stage 3 to Stage 4 Individuative-Reflective faith (Fowler, 1981:182-183) is particularly critical for it is in this transition that the late adolescent or adult must begin to take seriously the burden of responsibility for his or her own commitments, , beliefs and attitudes. Where genuine movement toward stage 4 is underway the person must face certain unavoidable tensions: individuality versus being defined by a group or group membership; subjectivity and the power of one's strongly felt but unexamined feelings versus objectivity and the requirement of critical reflection; self- fulfillment or self-actualization as a primary concern versus service to and being for others; the question of being committed to the relative versus struggle with the possibility of an absolute.

Stage 4 most appropriately takes form in young adulthood (but let us remember that many adults do not construct it and that for a significant group it emerges only in the mid-thirties or forties). This stage is marked by a double development. The self, previously sustained in its identity and faith compositions by an interpersonal circle of significant others, now claims an identity no longer defined by the composite of one's roles or meanings to others. To sustain that new identity it composes a meaning frame conscious of its own boundaries and inner connections and aware of itself as a "world view." Self (identity) and outlook (world view) are differentiated from those of others and become acknowledged factors in the reactions, interpretations and judgments one makes on the actions of the self and others. It expresses its of coherence in an ultimate environment in terms of an explicit system of meanings. Stage 4 typically translates symbols into conceptual meanings.

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This is a "demythologizing" stage. It is likely to attend minimally to unconscious factors influencing its judgments and behavior.

Stage 4's ascendant strength has to do with its capacity for critical reflection on identity (self) and outlook (ideology). Its dangers inhere in its strengths: an excessive confidence in the conscious mind and in critical thought and a kind of second narcissism in which the now clearly bounded, reflective self overassimilates "reality" and the perspectives of others into its own world view.

Restless with the self-images and outlook maintained by Stage 4, the person ready for transition finds him- or herself attending to what may feel like anarchic and disturbing inner . Elements from a childish past, images and energies from a deeper self, a gnawing sense of the sterility and flatness of the meanings one serves any or all of these may signal readiness for something new. Stories, symbols, myths and paradoxes from one's own or other traditions may insist on breaking in upon the neatness of the previous faith. Disillusionment with one's compromises and recognition that life is more complex than Stage 4's logic of clear distinctions and abstract concepts can comprehend, press one toward a more dialectical and multileveled approach to life truth.

Stage 5 Conjunctive faith (Fowler, 1981:197-198) involves the integration into self and outlook of much that was suppressed or unrecognized in the interest of Stage 4's self-certainty and conscious cognitive and affective adaptation to reality. This stage develops a second naivete (Ricoeur) in which symbolic power is reunited with conceptual meanings. Here there must also be a new reclaiming and reworking of one's past. There must be an opening to the voices of one's deeper self. Importantly, this involves a critical recognition of one's social unconscious-the myths, ideal images and prejudices built deeply into the self- system by of one's nurture within a particular social class, religious tradition, ethnic group or the like.

Unusual before mid-life, Stage 5 knows the sacrament of defeat and the reality of irrevocable commitments and acts. What the previous stage struggled to

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clarify, in terms of the boundaries of self and outlook, this stage now makes porous and permeable. Alive to paradox and the truth in apparent contradictions, this stage strives to unify opposites in mind and experience. It generates and maintains vulnerability to the strange truths of those who are "other." Ready for closeness to that which is different and threatening to self and outlook (including new depths of experience in and religious revelation), this stage's commitment to justice is freed from the confines of tribe, class, religious community or nation. And with the seriousness that can arise when life is more than half over, this stage is ready to spend and be spent for the cause of conserving and cultivating the possibility of others' generating identity and meaning.

The new strength of this stage comes in the rise of the ironic imagination-a capacity to see and be in one's or one's group's most powerful meanings, while simultaneously recognizing that they are relative, partial and inevitably distorting apprehensions of transcendent reality. Its danger lies in the direction of a paralyzing passivity or inaction, giving rise to complacency or cynical withdrawal, due to its paradoxical understanding of truth.

Stage 5 can appreciate symbols, myths and (its own and others') because it has been grasped, in some measure, by the depth of reality to which they refer. It also sees the divisions of the human family vividly because it has been apprehended by the possibility (and imperative) of an inclusive community of being. But this stage remains divided. It lives and acts between an untransformed world and a transforming vision and loyalties. In some few cases this division yields to the call of the radical actualization that we call Stage 6.

Stage 6 (Fowler, 1981:200-201) is exceedingly rare. The persons best described by it have generated faith compositions in which their felt sense of an ultimate environment is inclusive of all being. They have become incarnators and actualizers of the spirit of an inclusive and fulfilled human community.

They are "contagious" in the sense that they create zones of liberation from the

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social, political, economic and ideological shackles we place and endure on human futurity. Living with felt participation in a power that unifies and transforms the world, Universalizers are often experienced as subversive of the structures (including religious structures) by which we sustain our individual and corporate survival, security and significance. Many persons in this stage die at the hands of those whom they hope to change. Universalizers are often more honored and revered after death than during their lives. The rare persons who may be described by this stage have a special grace that makes them seem more lucid, more simple, and yet somehow more fully human than the rest of us. Their community is universal in extent. Particularities are cherished because they are vessels of the universal, and thereby valuable apart from any utilitarian considerations. Life is both loved and held to loosely. Such persons are ready for fellowship with persons at any of the other stages and from any other faith tradition.

Fowler's concept of faith Before critiquing Fowler's theory as a reflection of the broader developmental discourse, it is necessary to understand the tradition in which his concept of faith is located. It is important to understand before assuming its applicability to fundamentalism.

Perhaps the most frequent criticism that Fowler has endured is his use of this term in place of religion, worldview, or belief. Indeed, I have often referred to fundamentalism as a worldview rather than a faith. The reason for adopting worldview is that it is a truer term for the application of Piagetian theory. As noted previously, Kohlberg, Erikson, Oser and Gmünder, and Fowler engage in qualitative, affective extrapolations of the logico-mathematical Piagetian theory. As our focus takes a more holistic approach to the notion of development, it is important to adopt a more holistic and encompassing term. While Oser and Gmünder criticise the indeterminacy of Fowler's faith, their use of religion, like worldview fails to encompass the dimensions in which fundamentalism manifests or claims authority. Religion is too compartmentalised for our purposes, too exclusive in connotation. For this reason, the term faith is used to

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encompass fundamentalism for the continuing analysis. It is necessary to explore the definition and dimensions of faith in order to make its application to fundamentalism more explicit.

Defining Faith: The Problem of Definition Faith means many things to many people. The explicit purpose of this section is to define it in Fowler's terms while examining the context in which he produced this same definition. The purpose is also to provide a term adequate to bring the discourses of fundamentalism and development together.

In Stages of Faith (1981), Fowler recalls criticism of his choice of the word faith: They suggest the use of some more secular term for our focal concern. They have proposed "world view development," "belief system formation," or, on occasion, the "development of consciousness" as categories that would help us avoid confusion. (p.91) His later response, a response shared within the broader definitive context of this thesis is that: There simply is no other concept that holds together those various interrelated dimensions of human knowing, valuing, committing and acting that must be considered together if we want to understand the making and maintaining of human meaning. (p.92) The difficulty of the process of choosing words to describe this phenomenon of which I am assuming fundamentalism to be a part, reflects perhaps the extremes of its understanding between the secular and religious. The more secular world view and belief system perhaps fail to encompass fully the affective dimensions of religion and its understanding of the existence of an Objective within, between, and beyond the subjective self. Conversely, the more religious faith carries a stigma concerning the nature of this Objective and its relationship to the subjective.

Twentieth-century Protestant theologian to whom Fowler is theoretically indebted, introduces his Dynamics of Faith with the problem of definition: THERE is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and 91

popular, which is subject to more misunderstandings, distortions and questionable definitions than the word "faith." ... there is as yet no substitute expressing the reality to which the term "faith" points. So for the time being the only way of dealing with the problem is to try to reinterpret the word and remove the confusing and distorting connotations, some of which are the heritage of centuries. (1957, Introductory Remarks) What is this heritage of centuries? It is perhaps possible to reflect on Fowler's definition of faith by examining the choices that are of importance when defining faith.

Faith and intellect Past definitions of faith have tended to move between illuminist and intellectualist emphases (to use Groome's [1980] terminology). Too much emphasis on the latter and faith becomes over-intellectualised and thus interchangeable with modern notions of belief. Too much emphasis on the former and faith becomes so nebulous a concept as to be rendered practically impotent. A brief etymology of the word faith may serve to define this issue. This is not as James Barr warns in The Semantics of Biblical Language, to confuse "word derivation with word meaning. Word meaning, modern linguistics stresses, is properly understood synchronically" (In Solskice, 1985:81). Rather it is to provide an example of how the word meaning of faith has changed and to present a clearer working definition for its application to fundamentalism in this thesis.

The English word faith as found in the forms faithe, feyth, and fayth between the 15th and 17th centuries comes from the Latin credo, credere and fidere, meaning to "give one's heart to" and "to trust" respectively (Groome, 1980, p.61 & Fowler, 1981, p.11). The Greek equivalent of the word faith, (pistuo, pistis, πιστις) refers to trust, "through the whole corporeality of life" (Buber, 1951, p.26). Comparative religionist Wilfred Cantwell Smith (to whom Fowler was indebted) notes that the Hebrew equivalent (aman he' min, 'munah) refers to faith in a holistic sense common to Hindu and Buddhist understandings of faith (1977, p.71). Hebrew, Greek, and Latin etymologies of faith tend to indicate a trust that is encompassing of the whole person - Buber's "whole corporeality of life". 92

This holistic understanding of faith is often reduced to the intellectual assent of belief. W.C. Smith engages the historical causes of such a linguistic shift in Belief and History (1977) and Faith and Belief (1979). He identifies three linguistic shifts in the understanding of belief; a shift from the personal object of belief to an impersonal object; a shift from the first person subject of belief to third person subjects; and a shift from the popular association of belief with truth to the association of belief with falsehood (In Fowler, 1981, p.13). The definitive significance of these shifts is that faith as associated with belief has been so intellectualised and narrowly defined as to lose its and universal applicability. The applied significance of these shifts, as discussed later, is that fundamentalism fails to make the distinction between faith and intellectualised belief.

Faith understood in this way is used in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing as early as 1599, "He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat" (In The Oxford English Dictionary Vol. 5 [OED], 1989, pp.678-679). The notions of particular faith, true faith, false faith and no faith are found in earlier texts as in Maundev c1400, "Thei varien from oure Feithe"; and Eden's 1553 Treatise Newe India, "They have no law written and are of no faith". Thomas More in his Dyaloge of 1529 argues that, "The churche...muste...haue all one fayth" (OED, 1989). Such instances of particular usage are parent to the fundamentalist insistence that true faith is eqivocal with true belief. Popular usage often fails to make the same distinction.

As an example of such understandings, the Macquarie Dictionary (1991) includes among its definitions of faith: 2. belief which is not based on proof. 3. belief in the doctrines or teachings of religion. 4. the doctrines which are or should be believed. 5. a system of religious belief. (p.624) Such definitions take as total, the intellectual emphases of faith. Faith is equated with believing and believing with intellectual assent to doctrine or systematised religion. Doctrine, teaching, proof, and system connote such intellectualism in a scientific age. 93

Is there a golden mean between illuminist and intellectualist definitions of faith? The illuminist definition of faith is that which defines it exclusively in terms of the affective. Thus defined, faith is totally devoid of propositional content and there is no relationship between its articulation and its nature. W.C Smith in Faith and Belief (1979) prefers to relate illuminist and intellectualist definition. Belief rather than being an intellectual dimension of faith is seen as a product of faith. Faith is inseparable from its contents - from belief as intellectual assent. It is this relationship that rationalises the extension of the definition of faith to incorporate intellectual belief as a dimension of the same.

Faith and Action There seems to be a need for consonance between faith as action and faith as intellect, as the practised and the preached. Fowler's faith is not exchangeable with purely intellectual belief. Rather belief is an articulated expression of faith. Belief may be a poor expression of faith inasmuch as what is said and what is done are dissimilar. In this sense, belief without action (works) is dead and faith without action is impossible. And so action may be included in the scope of true faith. Though, action like belief, does not total faith, for similar actions may be undertaken with different intentions and good works may be known but not done.

Popular interpretation of the Reformation dialogue on faith and works has perhaps created a false dichotomy between the two. In this context, works and actions are being used interchangeably. For the scope of this thesis I would echo Luther's understanding of faith and works (without the immediate context of salvation) that, "it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire!" (Online in Smith, 1994). Groome (1980) offers similar sentiments in his definition of faith, "the faith and the doing belong together simultaneously. Or to state it another way, the faith is in the doing" (63).

Human actions and experience of other's actions form a cumulative experience.

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Faith both guides and is guided by, such experience. Here enters the notion of will - the ability to consider, choose, and then act selectively between desirable courses of action. Will is not to be confused with intellectual assent - this would be to falsely escape the act of will. Nor can the will be said to total faith. Tillich calls this the "voluntaristic distortion" of the meaning of faith; "our oscillating will cannot produce the certainty which belongs to faith" (1957:38). The intent of action assumes the existence of a will. In a corporeal faith action is the experiential orientation of life. Faith produces such actions and faith is a product of such actions. For Fowler, faith is a corporeal reality that centres and coordinates belief and action. Such faith is the state of ultimate concern and ultimate concern invokes belief and incites action and emotion.

Faith and Emotion Faith is able to control some emotion and be controlled by some emotion. Faith is emotive but emotion does not total faith. Faith elicits emotional responses that may change the very same faith. As such emotion is a dimension of faith. It is inseparable from its intellectual attributions and motivations. It is inseparable from the actions it inspires. Such is the understanding of corporeal faith in an interactionist context. Emotion is the passional dimension of Groome's understanding of faith and the affective dimension of Fowler's understanding of faith.

Tillich warns of the emotionalistic distortion of faith in Dynamics of Faith. His caution is that a false equivocation of faith with feeling: has induced many people to believe that faith is a matter of merely subjective emotions, without a content to be known and a demand to be obeyed...Faith as the state of ultimate concern claims the whole...and cannot be restricted to the subjectivity of mere feeling. (1957:39) In concurrence with this view, emotion is qualitatively directed or misdirected in the broader context of faith. Emotions bear witness to the act of centring faith. This directing or orientation of emotion suggests a centre of faith.

Fowler's notion of a centred faith is grounded in the tradition of theologians Richard Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. For Niebuhr faith is seen "in the search for 95

an overarching, integrating, and grounding trust in a centre of value and power sufficiently worthy to give our lives unity and meaning" (In Fowler, 1981:5). For Tillich (1957) faith is both an ultimate concern and a centred act. The intellect, the act, and its attached emotions are dimensions of faith. The centring of these dimensions as a holistic faith begs the perennial question concerning the existence of a universal centre.

Faith and the Ultimate One cannot centre (verb) without a centre (noun). As such, Fowler's faith has an objective but emerging quality. This objective and emerging quality is the common denominator of many names. Some call it God, the Holy, the Divine Milieu, the Ground of all Being, the Ultimate Concern, or in Fowler's case - the X-factor or the Kingdom of God as ultimate environment. Some understandably shrink from such loaded metaphors and call it Nature, Survival, or Life or refuse to name it at all. Some deny its existence, largely as a reaction to other terms but according to Fowler (1981) and Oser and Gmünder (1991) relate to it nonetheless. The question remains - what is the nature of this centre postulated by Fowler? Is it recognisable enough that one might discriminate between the contents and dynamics of faith that lead to or away from it?

For Tillich the content of belief is inseparable from the fulfillment of faith itself - though they are by no means interchangeable. In Dynamics of Faith (1957) he poses the question of faith and its contents: We have pointed to the limitless variety of symbols and to the many contrasting types of faith. This seems to imply a complete denial of the claim these symbols and types have to truth. Therefore, we must now discuss the question whether, and in what sense, faith can be judged in terms of truth. (74) Tillich's most extensive answer to this question is that the contents of faith are as effective as they are able to lead the bearer of faith to the Ultimate Concern (in Brown, 1965). Contents that lead to false ultimate concerns are therefore idolatrous. Tillich uses the words profanization and demonization when speaking of such concerns: Thus we are faced by two opposing dangers: on the one hand, what we may call (although I still prefer "profanization") - a process of 96

becoming more and more empty or materialistic without any ultimate concern; and on the other hand, demonization, which makes one particular , group, usage, worldview - or whatever - absolute. (In Brown 1965:5) Tillich is reticent to equate the Ultimate Concern with God or a god because of the idolatrous uses of these terms and their failure to encompass non-theistic concerns. He remains somewhat enigmatic about the nature and source of the Ultimate Concern.

In Stages of Faith (1981) Fowler speaks of an "ultimate environment" and the example of the Judeo-Christian "Kingdom of God". The ultimate environment is an image of the broadest framework of reality within which one creates and centres value. It is the ultimate framework of reference for the process of meaning making in life. It is the "transcendent backdrop of meaning and power in relation to which we make sense of our lives" (1981:33-34). In Life-Maps (1978) Fowler reveals that his "ecological metaphor ultimate environment, if translated into Jewish or Christian terms, would be called Kingdom of God "(45). He borrows from the Christian and Kantian (as described previously) traditions in postulating such a centre.

According to Fowler, this ultimate environment develops structurally and qualitatively to a final stage of faith - Stage 6. The developmental journey leads from the self to the ultimate, from the selfish to the selfless, from the polytheistic to the radically monotheistic, from the symbol to the symbolised, and from the particular to the universal. Hence the stage is described as - Universalising Faith. Fowler's is "loyalty to the principle of being and to the source and center of all value and power" (1981:23). A brief examination of Stage 6 examples reveals the nature of this source as assumed in Fowler's thesis. It is: A more inclusive justice and the realisation of love...heedless of the threats to self...of the imperatives of absolute love and justice...devotion to universalizing compassion...involving strategies of non-violent suffering and ultimate respect for being...inclusive of all being...liberation from the social, political, economic and ideological shackles...a special grace...ready for fellowship...a ministry of presence, service and care. (200-203)

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In Fowler's view this very real centre of being exerts a gravitational pull on a developing faith. The centre's essence is best described and understood the closer one gets. Therefore, Fowler's Stage 6 purports to offer a qualitatively better description of the Ultimate than do lower stages. Though exceedingly rare, Fowler claims to find Stage 6 characteristics embodied in the life and works of Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr. (1981:203).

It is a step boldly taken to first postulate and then describe a benevolent centre of being. To do so is to assume an epistemological position. It is to assume life purpose beyond the time-space containment of one's own physical existence. It also assumes a single essence for the centre while maintaining that other ascribed to the centre are accommodated in the necessary and inescapable progression toward it. Such a purpose is universal - necessarily opposed to nihilism and pure relativism. Such a universal permeates the particular. The postulation of such a centre makes faith qualitative. It is to say that faith becomes progressively truer to an ultimate centre as it matures. The truth of Fowler's claim relies on the evidence of stage structures, the descriptions he derives from this evidence, and the order in which he supposes these descriptions should be placed.

Figure 2. The centred dimensions and dynamics of faith

Dimensions of Faith

Dynamics of Faith

Ultimate Concern

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Faith as whole In Fowler's understanding of faith, isolated dimensions are mere distortions of a corporeal, holistically experienced faith. They have been isolated thus far in an attempt to make faith a more manageable concept. It is important to reaffirm Fowler's corporeal dynamic of faith as a combined orientation of intellect, action and emotion. This is not to attribute a measure of strength to each or to say that all are equal. It is merely to say that they coexist.

Paul Tillich cautions against distortion of the dimensions of faith in Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality: [Faith] is an act of the whole personality. Will, knowledge, and emotion participate in it. It is an act of self-surrender, of obedience, of assent. Each of these elements must be present. Emotional surrender without assent and obedience would by-pass the personal center. It would be a compulsion and not a decision. Intellectual assent without emotional participation distorts religious existence into a nonpersonal cognitive act. Obedience of the will without assent and emotion leads into depersonalizing . (1955:53) Tillich's "will, knowledge, and emotion" are synonymous with the dimensions of "action, intellect, and emotion" used here.

The holism of faith may be understood as a dynamic of faith because of the infinite variety and constant change of dimensional strengths and combinations that form faith in different situations and between different people. Fowler uses the phrase "dynamic triad of faith" to describe this dynamism. In a chapter entitled The Dynamic Triad of Faith he states summarily: Whenever we properly speak of faith it involves people's shaping or testing their lives' defining directions and relationships with others in accordance with coordinates of value and power recognized as ultimate. (1981:93) The dynamic triad of faith thus explained is synonymous with Buber's "whole corporeality of life" (1951:26).

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Faith and Relationship Fowler's concept of faith is formed and expressed through relationships. These relationships include self, other, and centres of value. Such relationships are dynamic. Humans may share different centres of value with different others. Centres of value may change as development occurs or as new relationships are formed with others. Centres of value may dominate relationship with others and self. Fowler describes these relationships as a triadic covenantal pattern between self (s), others (o) and shared centres of value and power (scvp). scvp

s o

(Fowler, 1981:17) The "centres of value and power" previously discussed as "ultimate concerns". The "other" may be discussed as communities of faith. But first it is necessary to define the dynamics between faith and self.

The notion of self is a broad and difficult topic. I shall necessarily confine my definitive attempts to compatibility with Fowler's model as a primary concern. Fowler sees faith as an "integral part of one's character or personality" (1981:92). Remembering that faith is "a way of knowing and seeing the conditions of our lives in relation to more or less conscious images of an ultimate environment" (92) it is possible to explore the dynamics of self that construct such images.

The imaginative ability is essential to the construction of an ultimate environment. Much of this relationship with the centres of value and power is formed, tested, and strengthened in the hypothetical. Imagination enables living through the hypothetical. The faith of fantasy and the faith of reality are interrelated. In a sense, both are lived. The two are inseparable. Some argue that they are one and the same. Fowler maintains a distinction between the two, arguing that reality inevitably invades fantasy and, "in the interplay between

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such invasions of normality and the symbolic representations of the transcendent that have grasped us, we compose images (and perhaps beliefs about and concepts of) the ultimate conditions of our existence" (97). The subjective self is the site of this interplay though the "rules of interplay" are largely affected by the community of one's faith.

The community of faith (i.e. fundamentalist communities) is perhaps the most significant type of relationship for the expression of a developing faith. Herein lies our rationale for examining fundamentalism as a community expression of a faith in the context of development. A community of faith identifies itself with particular centres of value and the symbols and stories that access these centres. To anticipate the later analysis, fundamentalist communities tend to identify themselves with symbols and stories without a developing appreciation of how the centres of the same may be shared by other symbols and stories. Symbols and stories thus become the centres of faith rather than the entries into faith.

The vitality of a community's faith exists through its symbols. Symbols themselves are necessarily vital and dynamic less they lose the power to symbolise the ultimate concern. Membership in community is through participation in these symbols and stories. Participation is achieved primarily through immersion in the community discourse. The discourses of communities of faith are canonised through myth and . "Cult and myth keep faith alive. No one is completely without them; for no one is completely without an ultimate concern" (Tillich, 121). are extremely powerful in orientating the faith of the participant. They provide attributions and value assessments for all kinds of behaviours associated with the centring of faith. Such is the power of fundamentalist communities that produce and protect the contents of faith.

Faith and Content The dynamic relationship between faith and its contents is complex and contentious. It is especially significant in the examinations of fundamentalisms which define themselves exclusively by the contents they profess. The contents

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of Fowler's concept of faith are as diverse as the meta-narratives of religions and as mundane as the minutiae of everyday living. The contents of faith are also the impassioned stuff of national identity and individual esteem. The contents of faith bind the individual to community and thus rescue the individual from anomie.

Can one speak qualitatively of the contents of faith in any objective sense? To answer this question immediately reveals the dominant discourse of one's research. Not to answer it or to say that it cannot be answered reveals much the same. Fowler follows in the tradition of Kant and Tillich in that the contents of faith may be valued inasmuch as they lead into a more definitive relationship with the aforementioned centre. Fowler's research suggests the existence of a developmental progression towards this source. The contents of faith are part of this progression. They change and are changed by the broader cognitive structures of faith. In a developmental context Fowler acknowledges this as "the dynamic interplay of formal structures and the structuring power of particular contents in faith" (1981:273). Only according to this criterion can Fowler's structural developmental approach offer a value statement about fundamentalism - if indeed fundamentalism represents and perpetuates particular stages.

Critical Reflection of Fowler There are many starting points on the epistemological continuum. Initial epistemological bias causes great difference in later causal connections and conclusions - a sort of epistemological butterfly effect. Developmental psychology cannot escape criticism for its epistemological bias. The review thus far has traced the evolution of developmental psychology from Kant to Freud to Piaget to Erikson to Oser and Gmünder and then Fowler. The broadest criticisms of Fowler applicable to this application concern the starting points or assumptions of developmental psychology. A brief recap of these assumptions is necessary.

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Developmental psychology assumes a sort of universality in cognitive structures. It assumes a universal genetic predisposition to sequential and predictable change in these structures. It assumes a type of teleological development. It is essentially a structuralist approach - knowledge as content organised according to innate cognitive rules of structure. The evidence, put simply is in the strong correlation between age and ways of perceiving contents and dealing with cognitive problems. Children generally perceive the world differently to adolescents and adolescents differently to adults. Children generally approach cognitive problems differently to adolescents and adolescents approach problems differently to adults. Is this a true effect and can it be explained differently?

Piaget, Kohlberg, and Fowler all acknowledge that adults while generally more structurally mature than children, may vary greatly in their development. In other words, not all old age adults reach full developmental maturity. Many adults maintain equilibrium throughout life at a relatively low stage of development. To account for this in a developmental framework one must postulate reasons for restricted development. It is impossible at present to verify purely neurological causes because of experimental inaccessibility. It is impossible to observe space-time thoughts in a physical brain. This is a mind- brain problem. However, one can verify sociological or environmental factors influencing development. The accessibility of the latter has led to its defence in the form of pure sociology or behaviourism within a postmodern discourse. In this context development is an unnecessary and unverifiable concept. Piaget (who referred to himself as a developmental epistemologist) tried to avoid the extremes of preformation (innate ideas) and environmental (Campbell, 2000:1). Fowler's theory as located in the broader developmental discourse reflects such theory and is criticised over the same epistemological assumptions.

Further criticism of Fowler is grounded in some of his own results that dispute the predicted stage-age pattern. Fowler notes in his chapter on interview analysis that, "the 31-40 age group, interestingly, has a larger number (37.5%)

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of Stage 3 respondents than the previous group". He goes on to postulate that, "while this may be due to a sampling bias, it may also be a result of different generational cohort experiences. This intriguing fact, and the questions it suggests, cannot be explained without further research and more sophisticated analysis of our present data" (1981, 317). Why is this fact intriguing? What are the questions it suggests?

Fowler is committed to his developmental discourse. Such conflicting data is at first an exception to the rule. It must be assimilated into his developmental discourse. This section of analysis gives us a broader glimpse at the criticism of developmental psychology's initial epistemological assumptions. Such criticism would possibly argue that all of his data should be viewed as (to use his own words) “a result of different generational cohort experiences”. Within such a discourse Fowler's stages become “patterns of enculturated contents”. The notion of development becomes an illusion created by a particular enculturated group to validate its own power - a cognitive elitism. It is implicit that Stage 6 is more desirable than Stage 1. Adults who plateau at Stage 2 or 3 are stunted or underdeveloped. It is difficult to escape the value connotations of such terms.

The developmentalist's reply to such criticism is twofold. The first is philosophical, the second is empirical. Fowler positions himself as having a theory of relativity. He has: A theory of relativity in faith in which forms of religious life are considered as relative representations or modes of response to that determinative center of power and value that is the sovereign reality with which we humans have to deal in life, whether we know it or acknowledge it or not. (1981, pp.295) This philosophical stance invokes a Kantian response to the charge of objectivism. Kant reasoned that the very existence of a faculty of thinking that allowed criticism in the first place, the very existence of value sense (morality) necessitated two presuppositions - the existence of a first cause and the moral nature of that cause. In theological terms this is the basis of the cosmological and the axiological arguments for the existence of God. It argues that relativist criticism of objectivist theories has (by its own admission) no foundation and 104

yet the very act of criticism implies a foundation of meaningful differentiation. If this foundation is empirical then Kantians respond that the laws and faculties that enable empirical observation are themselves empirical evidence of something objective that brought them into being.

The second level of response concerns the use of the empirical to test a theory of development. If a theory of development is true then it should be consolidated by empirical observation. If Fowler believes that the Mythic -Literal Stage precedes the Conjunctive and Universalist Stage then theoretically one would not find a child with Conjunctive and Universalist structuring tendencies. However, to test this one would have to avoid questions or tasks that would enable the rote repetition of socialised Conjunctive Stage responses. The difficulty at the other end of the chronological spectrum is that seemingly Conjunctive/Universalist responses could be the product of specific cultural socialisation. In order to empirically test the universality of the developmental theory it must include both cross-cultural and longitudinal data.

So what is the empirical evidence for the developmentalist suppositions on which Fowler rests his theory? Piaget’s empirical observations were collected using the clinical method involving verbal interaction between experimenter and participant. The experimenter tries to identify a line of reasoning inherent in the participant's responses. The predictability of such responses is seen to support the theory, while deviations require theoretical adjustment or alternative explanation. Commentator on developmentalism, Patricia Miller notes, "The thousands of observations by Piaget himself, combined with the thousands of studies inspired by him, constitute a remarkable body of information" (1993:85). Similarly, while examining Fowler's theoretical assumptions Nelson and Aleshire (In Dykstra and Parks, 1986:199) write: Critics could plead the case for plausible alternative hypotheses that explain some of Fowler's data more precisely and systematically than the hypotheses forwarded in this study. But Fowler has an interesting advantage for his case which the critics do not yet possess - ten to twelve thousand pages of transcribed data. The best evaluation of empirical research - even tentative, heuristic research - is more empirical research. 105

Fowler describes his initial empirical research in Stages of Faith (1981): "The empirical foundations of the theory of faith development rest upon 359 interviews that my associates and I have conducted in the years from 1972 to 1981" (313).

Fellow developmentalists Oser and Gmünder claim of their theory of religious judgment: The stages of religious development postulated by us can be validated empirically. This chapter introduces a cross-sectional research project which we conducted with 112 persons of different ages in the clock and watch manufacturing town, Grenchen, Switzerland. (1991:170) More recently, phenomenological approaches to epistemology have verified developmental hierarchies. Dawson (Unpublished dissertation, 1998) identifies broad coherence between phenomenological studies (Giorgi, 1986; Marton, 1994a; Salgo, 1979; van Rossom et al., 1985) and cognitive-developmental studies (17-25).

Inevitably, there are differences between developmental theories. As previously noted, Oser and Gmünder criticise the broadness of Fowler's theory and the vagueness of the concept of faith (1991:44). This brings us to a final orientation and qualification of the theoretical application at hand. While the adoption of a developmental theory for application to fundamentalism assumes that theory's value, our analysis of fundamentalism raises some important ideological questions. A significant question that fundamentalism raises is: if a stage- transition is reached and consciously rejected or retreated from (as in reconversion to fundamentalism) what does this mean for the assumed qualitative desirability of stage progression? Just as significant is the question; if phylogenetic ideologies can affect ontogenetic development so profoundly, how can one assume that the current developmental model itself is not a phylogenetic representation of our current epoch? This question is perhaps best answered in light of an exploration of the contents of religious fundamentalism.

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2.1.7 Conclusion

The review, synthesis, and analysis presented in Part One has revealed the epistemological assumptions, the methodology, and findings of the developmental discourse. It identified an interactionist epistemology constructed empirically by Piaget assuming the philosophical legacy of Kant. It questioned the findings and assumptions of developmentalism in light of fundamentalist epistemologies. The synthesis continues with a more direct application to fundamentalist contents and structures within the Christian tradition.

The historical-chronological approach adopted throughout this part of Chapter Two has served to reveal the historical context of the epistemological conflict between fundamentalism, postmodernism and developmentalism. Similarly, it helps the reader to examine the developmental tradition for epistemological and religious bias that could affect the qualitative extrapolation of Piaget’s essentially logico-mathematical stages by Fowler (1981), Oser and Gmünder (1991) and Kohlberg (1975). This first part of Chapter Two has firmly acknowledged the historical dimension of the synthesis between fundamentalism and developmentalism.

The review and analysis of religious fundamentalism in Part Two continues with a justification and a qualification. The justification is that the empirical and philosophical rationale for developmental theory is strong enough to warrant it serious application. The qualification is that "History makes every theory look deficient in some way" (Beilin in Miller, 1992:440). Nonetheless, such history evolves dialectically with new research.

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2.2 Approaches to Fundamentalism: The value and application of a structuralist approach

2.2.1 Defining Fundamentalism

Introduction This section of synthesis and analysis examines alternative approaches to fundamentalism. The purpose of this section is twofold: Firstly, it reveals the descriptive power of the developmental discourse to accommodate the insights of sociological, psychological and historical-content based approaches to fundamentalism. Secondly, it provides the opportunity to define and focus fundamentalism through further examination of its contents, dimensions and dynamics.

Before embarking on the process of definition it is important to reiterate the problems of definition. One can never define a worldview or faith with exactitude. It will always be subject to the infinite peculiarities and affectations of the individual bearer. Individuals frequently use labels that do not best describe them and frequently apply labels that poorly describe others. These are the limitations of both the temporality and inaccessibility of language. The best one can do to define is to move from the clear to the abstract, the familiar to the unfamiliar, the core to the periphery. In identifying the centres of a worldview or faith one can appreciate the relative centripetal force exerted by the same on its outward manifestations. It is important to note that the further one extends analysis from the centres of a worldview or faith the more tentative this analytical grasp must be and the decreasing number of adherents it will represent.

To step inside a particular faith along the fundamentalist - liberal religious continuum is usually to view all others along the continuum as essentially and epistemologically flawed. This is an inevitable consequence of relative

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definition as encountered by Kirk Hadaway in his studies of fundamentalist and liberal affiliation in American denominations. Several denominations have gained reputations as being liberal or fundamentalist from being compared to their sister denominations when in fact on an absolute scale they may not be either particularly "liberal" of "fundamentalist". (Hadaway in Smith, 1987:4) Much of the definition of fundamentalism is determined by its response to other isms along the religious continuum.

A second difficulty with the act of defining is its inseparability from valuation. The language of definition is rarely neutral. Even the most innocuous definitions attract undesirable connotations in some contexts. As author on fundamentalism James Barr observes, the term fundamentalism suggests "narrowness, bigotry, obscurantism, and sectarianism" (1977:2). Such connotations are unintended in the definitive scope of this thesis. Any truth behind such connotations is to be subsumed under the structural developmental context.

A related problem of definition is the inevitability that some groups claim sole ownership of a label while others seek to actively disassociate from the labels given them (Bruce, 1984:2). Boone (1989) observes that, "many conservatives reject the label fundamentalist, preferring to call themselves evangelicals” (8). Such examples necessitate an exercise of caution. As author, I can only describe the contents of any labels I use and leave the reader to determine its accuracy for themselves.

Epistemological Definitions It was noted at the fore of this thesis that the fundamentalist - liberal divide reflected in theory - perennially different epistemological approaches. It is from these epistemological centres that the particulars of each faith develop. The contention of this thesis is that these epistemologies are developmentally significant. What then are the epistemological sign posts along this continuum?

Steve Bruce in his popularised thesis, Firm in the Faith (1984) defines 109

Christian groups according to their relative emphases on four epistemological sources of salvational knowledge. These four sources are reason and culture, the Bible, the Church, and the Spirit. Bruce attributes the proximate emphases of these sources to liberal Protestants, conservative Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox, Charismatics and Pentecostalists respectively (1984,5). The difficulty with this typology as Bruce himself notes is that some Christian groups have an eclectic approach to salvational knowledge.

Bruce's terminology presents another dilemma of definition - whether to use fundamentalist as a subcategory of or, as an umbrella term synonymous with conservatism? Bruce distinguishes fundamentalist from reformed, and evangelical, both of which he places under the umbrella of conservative Protestantism. He leaves charismatics and pentecostals outside of this umbrella. Before borrowing from and changing Bruce's typology it is perhaps useful to emphasise the dilemma by noting some other typological schemes.

In Classifying Protestant Denominations, Smith (1987) refers to fundamentalism as, "a movement of conservative or traditionalist Protestant denominations that grew largely out of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements (and later denominations) of the nineteenth century" (2). The General Social Survey (GSS) used by Smith draws on previous systems of denominational classification (see Table 4).

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Table 4. Denominational Classifications

Study Denominational Classifications Wood (1970) Fundamentalist, Conservative, Moderate, Liberal Chi & Houseknecht Fundamentalist, Non-fundamentalist (1985) Johnson (1962) Fundamentalist, Liberal Houghland & Conservative, Liberal/Moderate Christenson (1983) Backman (1983) Orthodox, Orthodox with large liberal minority, Moderate, Moderate with large liberal minority, Liberal Glock & Stark (1965) Fundamentalist, Conservative, Moderate, Liberal McCutcheon (1985) Conservative, Not-Conservative Roof & McKinney Conservative, Liberal (1985) Roof & Hadaway Conservative, Moderate, Liberal (1979) Elifson & Hadaway Conservative, Moderate, Liberal (1985)

Herein, it is possible to see the interchange of the term fundamentalist with the term conservative. Bruce, Roof, and Hadaway use conservative while Smith, Glock, Wood, Chi, and Johnson use fundamentalist. For the purposes of this thesis I have chosen to use fundamentalist in the tradition of Smith to encompass a phenomenon existent in a range of denominations including Pentecostal, evangelical, charismatic, and orthodox denominations. The term fundamentalism also enables the insight gained through analysis of such movements in other religions. A review of Marty and Appleby (1991) will examine fundamentalism in other religions. This choice is made largely with the benefit of hindsight of its compatibility with the field of primary research analysed in this thesis.

Review Outline The following conceptual synthesis examines previous descriptions and analyses of fundamentalism in light of the structural developmental approach 111

of this thesis. The purpose of such a synthesis is to provide a detailed description of fundamentalism, to synthesise approaches within the structural developmental discourse, and to clarify the definition of development as a criterion for value judgment of fundamentalism.

The review is organised into the distinctives of approaches to fundamentalism. The approaches are reviewed in the following order: apologetic, ex-apologetic, Protestant socio-historical, multi-religious socio-historical, epistemological, hermeneutic, psychological (including psychopathological and psychoapocalyptic approaches), and developmental. These approaches are by no means mutually exclusive. Herein lies the power of a structural developmental approach to fundamentalism. A developmental approach provides a model of interaction between the psychological and socio-historical dimensions of fundamentalism.

Figure 3. Approaches to fundamentalism

Psychosocial Developmental Approach

Socio- Psychological historical Approaches Approaches

Developmental psychology allows for an inclusive definition of fundamentalism. It is interactionist; seeking to understand the dynamic interaction between the psychological and the social elements of fundamentalism. Herein, fundamentalism is a manifestation of the interaction between socio-historical conditions and universal stage structures. The social and psychological dimensions of fundamentalism interact through the processes of accommodation and assimilation. As such, fundamentalism is most inclusively defined in the context of psychosocial development.

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2.2.2 Apologetic Approaches to Fundamentalism

Perhaps the most enlightening approaches to fundamentalism come from those who embrace it and those who have left it. The first part of this review observes fundamentalism from within. What do its own apologists say that it is and how do they defend it? How might a fundamentalist respond to the structural developmental approach to their faith? For answers to these questions, the review turns to some of the most prominent advocates of the fundamentalist faith. Collectively they provide a comprehensive overview of fundamentalism from its presuppositional apologetics to its political involvement. They are quoted extensively, though often unknowingly, in popular fundamentalist and evangelical discourses. Some of these advocates embrace the term fundamentalist while others would perhaps prefer the less stigmatised conservative-evangelical.

Before reviewing the definitions of such apologists it is important to ask the question; do apologists represent the discourse of fundamentalism or do they represent a discourse within fundamentalism? The detail and expansiveness of fundamentalism is inevitably reduced to an individual's expression of it. Such expression as Boone observes in The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism (1989) is often ignorant of its own ideological heritage: Most rank-and-file fundamentalists are dimly aware, at best of J.N. Darby's dispensationalism, the Princeton Theology, Common Sense philosophy, or even what has become known as the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, epitomized by the Scopes Trial. (3) In many cases the individuals are children or adults who have never even heard the term fundamentalist. Other authors encountered in this review actually characterise fundamentalism as the precocious repetition and unapologetic acceptance of creed. As such, there are two dimensions to fundamentalism that must be faced in this review - a content dimension, and a psychological dimension.

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Jerry Falwell, in a foreword to an edited collection of short essays (mostly finding fault with fundamentalism) writes: Yet while these critics try to be objective and seem to understand us relatively well, they still improperly represent some of our characteristics...Unfortunately, very few authors have personally interviewed fundamentalist leaders or travelled to do on-site research of our movement and its institutions. Too much of the published material has been written from "ivory towers" and is therefore somewhat uninformed and distorted. (In Selvidge, 1984:7). What are these characteristics? Protestant fundamentalism is a broad and eclectic discourse. It is also an acutely divided movement in some of its practices and doctrines.

A review of these authors reveals many beliefs characteristic of fundamentalism. To move from the clear to abstract, a Protestant Fundamentalist is self-characterised by: • A belief in God • A love for and belief that he is God • The belief that the Bible is the Word of God • The belief that the Bible is inerrant and infallible • The belief that the world is divided into the saved and unsaved • The belief that people are saved by believing in Jesus • The belief that the saved go to heaven and the unsaved go to hell • The belief that human nature is essentially 'fallen' and 'depraved' • The belief that we cannot save ourselves • The belief that salvation is a gift that we obtain by believing in Jesus • The belief that those who do not believe in Jesus are evil, lost in sin, deceived, and condemned to eternal punishment • The belief that God is going to bring judgment on the world • The belief that God will save his own from the worst of his judgment • The belief that Jesus talks to believers • The belief that God answers prayer • The belief that evolution is a Satanic conspiracy and a lie • The belief in six-day creationism • The belief that the world is a battleground for literal demons and angels 114

• (Evangelical and Pentecostal Fundamentalism) The belief that one must be born again to be truly saved • (Pentecostal) The belief that speaking in tongues is a sign of being born again • An intense suspicion and dislike of Mormons, Free-Masons, Jehovah's Witnesses, , self-help movements, Psychology, Evolutionary Biology, Secular Scholarship, Secular Humanitarian organisations, The United Nations, The , Homosexuals, and Liberal Christians. • The belief that Jesus is going to return very soon and that current events are the signs of the End Times • The belief that moral standards are disintegrating and that the world is becoming more evil and chaotic as a result • The belief that abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, premarital sex, drug-use, , and adultery are inherently evil • The belief that the aids epidemic and natural disasters are judgments of God • The belief that the authority of a husband over a wife is a divine law • The belief that women should not preach in Church These characteristics represent typical content of the Protestant fundamentalist discourse. There are however, deviations in the more abstract of beliefs. They are beliefs derived from Scripture and its authorities of interpretation. These beliefs are embraced, abstracted, and applied in ways that create characteristic dynamics and attitudes. In light of the developmental approach what is more important than the beliefs alone, is the relationship between belief and ways of believing. Fundamentalism must be understood as a discourse that admits no other. It does not share insights or partial truth with other discourses, rather it defines itself in totality against them.

Doctrine and True Belief It is important to continue to pursue the fundamentalist notion of belief differentiated from other notions of belief. The primary difference as fore- mentioned is the limited scope of fundamentalist tolerance for other beliefs. The defining factor is that fundamentalism views the consequences for wrong belief in terms of a literal eternal punishment - hell. Few other systems of belief are so expressively concerned with different beliefs as a matter affecting eternity in heaven or hell. LaHaye (1980), Schaeffer (1968), and Rushdoony

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(1971) represent the world as a battleground of beliefs. Humanism, secular science, and alternative religions are literally demonised. The fundamentalist must fight to maintain true belief against the onslaught of a deceptive, manipulative and immoral society.

The full title of LaHaye's book You are Engaged in the Battle for the Mind; A Subtle Warfare (1980) represents this sense of ideological warfare. LaHaye identifies the enemy in no uncertain terms in the preface: An invisible enemy threatens our society. Its name? Humanism. Its target? Your mind...Whether most people are aware of it or not, - the philosophy that declares, "no will save us; we must save ourselves" - has been quietly woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Yet the danger signs are quite evident: • Legislation on the national level reflects widespread acceptance of easy divorce, abortion-on-demand, gay rights, militant feminism, unisex facilities, and leniency towards pornography, prostitution and . • The public school system has demonstrated hostility toward prayer, moral and , creation as an alternative to evolution, and the teaching of within a moral context • A sexually permissive, self-indulgent approach to life has become the for movies, books, and even prime time television In short, many religious leaders believe that America may well follow in the footsteps of Sodom and Gomorrah. LaHaye attributes the evils of society to Humanism. His fears reflect those of his mentor Francis Schaeffer.

Schaeffer traces the philosophical origins of humanism in The God Who is There (1968). He draws a philosophical lineage from Kant to Hegel to Kierkegaard and labels Kierkegaard "the first man below the line of despair"(21). Schaeffer's line of despair refers to what he believes is a change in the concept of truth. He begins his book with the observation; "The present chasm between the generations has been brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth" (13). Like LaHaye, he identifies the modern enemy of humanism as bearing the legacy of philosophical despair. He defines

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humanism as, "the system whereby man, beginning absolutely by himself, tries rationally to build out from himself, having only man as his integration point, to find all knowledge, meaning and value" (17). He sees the philosophical shift in the concept of truth as a battle of forces - principalities and powers: The Christian is to resist the spirit of the world. But when we say this we must understand that the world spirit does not always take the same form. So the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation...this is especially so for our generation, as the forces at work against us are of such a total nature...[he must become] a living warrior for Jesus Christ. (18-19). Fundamentalists perceive themselves as living in a hostile world separated in whole by the truth of which they are a part.

Californian pastor and evangelist, Rousas Rushdoony represents the Calvinist challenge to modern secularism. His writings reflect the same totality of association between truth and fundamentalism and falsehood and secularism as his contemporaries Schaeffer and LaHaye, and his predecessors J. Gresham Machen and Cornelius Van Til.

In The One and the Many (1971) Rushdoony defines the classic fundamentalist epistemological dilemma of the one truth against the many: The differences between Christianity and atheism are basic, as are the differences between and Christianity. Russian , Roman Catholicism, , , and each has its characteristic culture or consequence in the social and political action of its own presupposition. Failure to recognize that all routes to God are not equally valid...has extensively clouded the possibility of an intelligible answer. The plea that this is a pluralistic culture is merely recognition of the problem - not an answer. (1) Rushdoony, using what has become a common fundamentalist analogy, likens the plight of the secular society to that of a crumbling Rome, “it is dying, but it continues to laugh” (365-366). He ends The One and the Many with a call to reconstruct true Christianity and usher in the millennial kingdom before the return of Christ.

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The fundamentalist concept of truth, and its accompanying doctrinal protectionism is perceived negatively by those outside the discourse as dogmatism. However, the insider is constantly aware of heresy and in a way few believers in other systems are. Such an acute awareness of the tenets of one's belief comes from the notion that belief itself determines eternal existence. There is an innate suspicion of other systems of belief or worldviews. Schaeffer and LaHaye believe that the “lies of secular humanism” keep people from heaven in a very real way. Their assumption reflects the distinctive fundamentalist fear that to die without a professed belief in Christ is to condemn oneself to eternal hellfire. This is a very real fear. It understandably motivates the seriousness of the fundamentalist's task, the extremism required to carry it out, the fanaticism required to hold true in a hostile world, and the intolerance for relativist tolerance.

Development and Fundamentalist Truth Developmentalism contends that there can be a strong relationship between contents of belief and corporeal faith in Fowler's sense. However, as Fowler maintains, belief does not equal faith, it is a part thereof. Developmentally, fundamentalism reflects a compartmentalised structural inability to differentiate between propositional beliefs and a life of faith. Fowler asserts: In faith, both the 'forms' and the 'contents' exert power in shaping a person's life sustaining, life-guiding meanings. Changes or blocks in either one or the other can have transforming (or deforming) effects on a person's faith (1981:273). Fundamentalism ignores the forms and exclusively embraces the contents. This is a tendency indicative of stages of Mythic-Literal (Stage 2) and Synthetic- Conventional (Stage 3) faith.

In Stage 2: Beliefs are appropriated with literal interpretations...They do not, however, step back from the flow of stories to formulate reflective, conceptual meanings. For this stage the meaning is both carried and "trapped" in the narrative. (149) Because meaning is "trapped in the narrative" fundamentalists necessarily consider their narrative (contents) and equitable faith as the One between the 118

many. Similarly, at Stage 3: While beliefs and values are tacitly held - the person "dwells" in them and in the meaning world they mediate. But there has not been occasion to step outside them to reflect on or examine them explicitly or systematically. (173) Developmentalists, Oser and Gmünder contend that the ability to step outside, reflects an increasing cognitive ability of reversibility, "Higher reversibility refers also to the increasingly more flexible capacity for processing concrete religious content. So how can developmentalism explain the considerable knowledge and understanding of worldviews that Schaeffer, LaHaye, and Rushdoony demonstrate while maintaining that they are fundamentalists?

The developmentalist's answer to this question is that knowledge and examination of other systems does not necessitate a stepping outside or dwelling within them. So long as one dwells on other systems while dwelling within one's own, nothing has been stepped outside of. To step outside of a system does not mean that one has to reject it and dwell within the other. Developmentally, to step outside is to appreciate that parts of the universal are revealed in the particulars of the other. Fundamentalism, as represented by LaHaye, Schaeffer, and Rushdoony is a refusal or failure to look for the universal in the particular of the other. This failure is manifest in the total demonisation of the other, and the metaphor of warfare, in the context of the belief that belief (content) on earth, alone determines eternal existence. This analysis provides a point of departure to study some of these contents and their penultimate source - the Protestant Bible.

Fundamentalism and the Fundamentals: The Bible The Bible, like the Scriptures of many other religious fundamentalisms, is a source of fundamentalist belief. The Bible fills the fundamentalist form with content. The notion that the Bible is in its entirety the very Word of God lends immeasurable intensity and activating power to the discourse. There is no more behaviourally motivating belief than one assumed to have been given directly by an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent deity. The Bible is the bedrock of Christianity and the range of its interpretations is the cause of a fundamentalist- liberal divide. So central is the interpretation of Scripture and its nature to the 119

understanding of fundamentalism that some commentators (Boone, 1989) have sought to examine fundamentalism as a primarily literary phenomenon. It is important then to understand the authority given to the source from which the doctrinal dimension of fundamentalism emerges.

One may examine the fundamentalist attitude to the Bible according to its perceived nature and authority, as well as its method of interpretation. The Bible is commonly referred to as the Word of God. It is perceived to be the final authority on all matters of life and living. It is perceived by some fundamentalists to be the only authority in all matters. As such, it is necessarily perceived to be without error and infallible. Most fundamentalists claim this to be true of the original manuscripts while some think the King James Version to be an equally inerrant and inspired translation. As previously mentioned, the doctrine of inerrancy is largely a philosophical necessity for the fundamentalist, for if one part is to be found errant who may put trust in any part of the whole? If the Bible is penned by mortal men in fallen states of mind, how can it be trusted to speak the truth?

Two of the most quoted advocates of the authority of the Bible in modern fundamentalist discourse are Josh McDowell and Norman Geisler. McDowell, a former lawyer, is author of Evidence that Demands a Verdict (1979). As the title suggests the book is an apologetic offering historical evidence to support the historicity of the Protestant canon, the literal space-time event of the resurrection and the Gospel . The book is prefaced with the revealing questions, "Is the Bible a reliable record of history? Is Jesus of Nazareth a liar, lunatic or Lord? Is the Christian faith based on a mere hoax or historical fact?". In a chapter titled, The Uniqueness of the Bible, McDowell expresses the foundational sentiments of Protestant Fundamentalism: The Bible should be on the top shelf all by itself. The Bible is "unique"...Webster [dictionary] must have had this "Book of books" in mind when he wrote the definition for "unique"...Professor M. Montiero- Williams...spent 42 years studying Eastern books and said this in comparing them with the Bible: "Pile them, if you will, on the left side of your study table; but place your own Holy Bible on the right side - all by itself, all alone - and 120

with a wide gap between them. For, ...there is a gulf between it and the so- called sacred books of the East which severs the one from the other utterly, hopelessly, and forever...a veritable gulf which cannot be bridged over by any science of religious thought". (1979:15) Norman Geisler assumes this "uniqueness" in his scrutinous defence of the Bible in the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (1999). He offers an unrelenting defense of Biblical inerrancy. In an earlier work Inerrancy (1979) Geisler writes: To stray from the Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp and adequate confession of its authority. (493) Similarly, prominent apologist, Gleason Archer, writes in Alleged Errors and Discrepancies in the Original Manuscripts of the Bible: We must therefore conclude that any event or fact related in Scripture - whether it pertains to doctrine, science, or history - is to be accepted by the Christian as totally reliable and trustworthy, no matter what modern scientists or philosophers may think of it. (in Boone, 1989:25) The power of any text so viewed to control thinking and behaviour is profound.

Geisler goes to great lengths to defend the notion of an inerrant Bible. God cannot err. The Bible is the Word of God Therefore, the Bible cannot err. (1999:74) Inerrancy and the mutual concept of infallibility are essential assumptions for the fundamentalist who reasons; if the Bible is subject to a single error of fact - scientific, historical or geographical then it becomes equally subject to error in theology. Geisler expresses this, "if the Bible does not speak truthfully about the physical world, it cannot be trusted when it speaks about the spiritual world" (75). Of apparent errors, he responds with the words of Augustine, "it is not allowable to say "The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood" (Augustine in Geisler, 74).

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Development and Inerrancy Can inerrancy be understood within a developmental model? Inerrancy and errancy theories tend to be reciprocally reactionary. In developmental terms, the debate perhaps reflects a transitional crisis between Stage 2 and Stage 3 of Oser and Gmünder's developmental theory of religious judgment and a Stage 3-4 transition in Fowler's model.

Oser and Gmünder describe Stage 3 as deistic and autonomous. It is the stage most likely to manifest an atheistic humanism because it may define itself as a rejection of the previous religious authority of Stage 2. It also lacks the structural means for recapitulating the religious symbols of childhood (as in Fowler's Stage 4). Arguably Oser and Gmünder's Stage 3 and Fowler's Stage 3 and 4 are attempts to describe the same phenomenon - an emerging consciousness of individual identity. In terms of religious authority of the past Oser and Gmünder's stage describes the capacity for its rejection due to its association with external authority which is now questioned. They accept the equally possible tendency to "express an extreme religious conviction" (73). Fowler seems to describe the capacity for further engagement of religious authority as a means of finding identity in a group that defines itself largely on the rejection of other groups and therefore fulfils the emerging sense of autonomy. Throughout these stages, truth is perceived as belonging exclusively to a particular group. This is because truth is tied exclusively to a particular narrative. As such, religious discourses are seen as "all or nothing" in relation to truth.

Inerrancy and errancy assume such a structural view of truth. Both assume that a single error destroys the validity of the whole because both view the whole that they possess as exclusive, in total and in part, from the other. In Protestant Fundamentalism this exclusivist, dichotomous approach is reinforced by the view that content belief equals salvation from real suffering. There is utmost trust in the human ability to clearly recognise the truth of their discourse if confronted with it in human terms. This is because they do not differentiate

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between text and real hermeneutic difficulties of contextual interpretation.

Geisler reveals the simplicity of the fundamentalist hermeneutic (and its congruence to developmental descriptions) when addressing the salvation of the heathen. He writes: God has many ways at his disposal through which he can get the truth of the Gospel to lost . The normative way is through preachers of the Gospel, whether in person or on radio, TV, or some recording...Many people have been given a Bible, read it, and been saved. Others have been saved through Gospel literature...People have free choice, and free choice is exercised freely. Some will believe and some will not. (306-7) The assumption is that the Gospel is clearly definable, readily recognisable, understandable, and easy to articulate.

McDowell's assumption that his evidence demands his verdict reveals likewise. It is difficult for a fundamentalist to accept that a person may struggle to accept their truth on intellectual grounds. McDowell writes of intellectual excuses: The rejection of Christ is often not so much of the "mind," but of the "will"; not so much "I can't," but "I won't"...I have found that most people reject Christ for one or more of the following reasons: 1. Ignorance...2. Pride...3. Moral Problem. (1979:10-11) Geisler's 841 page apologetic that seeks to defend the pure Gospel against a thousand erroneous versions seems testament to a problem of hermeneutic complexity unperceived in the errancy debate. The defence and centrality of the inerrancy debate reflects a battle within stage structures bound to the conclusion that all truth is bound exclusively to a particular discourse.

The extra burden for the Protestant Fundamentalist is that salvation from hell rests on the very acceptance of the whole discourse - the articulated acceptance of the verdict. McDowell recounts: A Moslem fellow approached me and, during our most edifying conversation, he said very sincerely, "I know many Moslems who have more faith in Mohammed than some Christians have in Christ." I said, "That may well be true, but the Christian is 'saved.'...Often I hear students say, "Some Buddhists are more dedicated and have more faith in Buddha (shows a misunderstanding of 123

Buddhism) than Christians have in Christ." I can only reply, "Maybe so, but the Christian is saved." (1979:4) Such equating of the total state of a person with their professed religious label (whatever partial relationship this has to their humanity) reveals a perception of truth limited to language and propositional knowledge alone. Such perception is indicative of structuring tendencies of Stage 2 and 3 in both Oser and Gmünder, and Fowler's theories of development.

Consider McDowell's response in light of Fowler's Stage 5 (conjunctive faith) and Stage 6 (universal faith) descriptions: [stage 5] This involves a critical recognition of one's social unconscious - the myths, ideal images, and prejudices built deeply into the self-system by virtue of one's nurture with a particular social class, religious tradition, ethnic group, or the like...Alive to paradox and the truth in apparent contradictions, this stage strives to unify opposites in mind and experience. It generates and maintains vulnerability to the strange truths of those who are "other." Ready for closeness to that which is different and threatening to self and outlook (including new depths of experience in spirituality and religious revelation), this stage's commitment to justice is freed from the confines of tribe, class, religious community, or nation...[stage 6] create zones of liberation from the social, political, economic, and ideological shackles we place and endure on human futurity...Such persons are ready for fellowship with persons at any other stage and from any other faith tradition. The provincialism of fundamentalism's propositional criteria for salvation disqualifies the universality and broadness of community described in these stages.

A final word on the application of development in this section must be given to the fundamentalists because fundamentalism necessarily excludes Fowler and Oser and Gmünder's theories. While these theorists make no mention of fundamentalism they are nonetheless formulated in environments where the fundamentalist discourse is tangible and overt. The fundamentalist may legitimately claim this environment as producing bias. Does Fowler reveal this bias against fundamentalism in saying: in the case of Christianity, I believe that a full appropriation of the 124

normative structuring tendencies contained in its content (the centres of value, the images of power and the master stories that constitute its normativity) moves toward the development of Universalizing faith. (1981:301-302). Are Fowler, Gmünder and Oser using development as a justification of their own theological positions i.e. making their own commitments the penultimate stages and classifying those who disagree at lower stages? Is developmental theory simply liberalism or relativism masquerading as science? Or, from a relativist point of view, is developmentalism another claim to an objective reality - the Ultimate?

These are legitimate questions. It is difficult to doubt the good-intentions of Fowler (himself a minister) and Oser and Gmünder in formulating a theory that embraces all beliefs while encouraging development toward a benevolent centre. However, intention has little to do with fact. The point is raised in light of McDowell's contention that people reject his understanding of Christ because they are ignorant, proud, or have a moral problem (1979:11). Fowler and Oser and Gmünder must contend that people reject their theory (a) from within a structure (fundamentalism) that cannot comprehend the tolerance of later structures, (b) because they find no evidence for an Ultimate Environment or centre or, (c) because they believe the empirical evidence to be insubstantial or misinterpreted.

The proof a developmentalist must offer must derive from studies, cross-cultural and longitudinal that reveal fundamental differences in the ways in which people perceive the world throughout their lifetime. These differences then need to reveal a familiar and invariable sequence between participants. There must then be a final leap of faith inevitable with all empirical interpretation that the empirical evidence is not a deception of a divine conspiracy to subvert the exclusiveness of fundamentalist Christianity. This is the unanswerable accusation. These questions will remain at the end of this thesis because it does not purport to add significant empirical evidence to the developmental discourse. Its primary intention is to examine fundamentalism in light of existing theory. The fit or congruency between developmental stages and fundamentalism could possibly be ascribed to the veiled intentions and hidden 125

agendas of Fowler in formulating his theory.

The assumptions of this thesis, thus exposed are that the stage descriptions are supported by empirical evidence; that the descriptions were not driven or conceived with the intention of subordinating fundamentalism; that Fowler and his fellow researchers did not formulate their theory out of ignorance, pride, or immorality; and that no divine conspiracy is fabricating empirical data. The latter is included in all seriousness in light of very real fundamentalist beliefs throughout history that such a conspiracy has provided other false evidences for theories including evolution, old earth theory, a heliocentric solar system, a round earth, and an expanding .

Having reviewed the Fundamentalist approach to the Bible we may return to the content therein that is structured and arranged in mutual relationship with the stages of development.

Protestant Fundamentalism: Hermeneutics and Salvation The fundamentalist (and others) believes that Scripture is a whole dedicated to the proclamation of a single Gospel: Biblical authors spoke on hundreds of controversial subjects with harmony and continuity from Genesis to Revelation. There is one unfolding story: "God's redemption of man."..."For all that, the Bible is not simply an anthology; there is a unity which binds the whole together. An anthology is compiled by an anthologist, but no anthologist compiled the Bible." (McDowell, 1979:16-17) The gospel to a fundamentalist is that Jesus Christ who was fully God and fully man died on a cross as an atonement for sins of which every human is guilty. This act of atonement is accessed only by believing in Christ. Without atonement the destiny of the individual is hell. With atonement the destiny of the individual is heaven. For many fundamentalists this interpretation is irreducible - if you confess with your lips and believe in your heart that Christ is Lord, you will be saved (Rom 10:9). Without Christ, all are lost. The intricacies of this gospel lead inevitably to the familiar debates of Christian theology (Christology, Soteriology, Calvinism and Arminianism) and ultimately to the 126

existence of a fundamentalist - liberal divide.

For a fundamentalist, belief in Christ is evidenced primarily and sometimes exclusively by its articulation. Hence the commonality of the question - "do you believe in Jesus" as a test of social membership. To ask "in what sense?" or "what do you mean by belief?" or "in what image of Jesus" would generally be considered an answer in the negative. However, this criterion of belief by no means guarantees recognition by a fundamentalist. There are equally weighted questions, the answers to which are used to judge ultimately one's eternal membership in the residence of heaven or hell. "Are you born again?", "do you speak in tongues?", "have you been baptised?", "do you believe that Jesus is coming soon?" and "have you been baptised in the Spirit" are common questions of Protestant Fundamentalist membership. These questions in turn give rise to more, such that the hell at stake inspired passion for correct Christianity permeates all levels of the discourse.

It is from this passion that the label of fanaticism arises. This permeating fanaticism has led some commentators to use it as the primary definitive of fundamentalism. Church historian Martin Marty (1987) refers to fundamentalism as "a worldwide reaction against many of the mixed offering of modernity" (299) believing that it "appeals to a rather definite class and personality type" (300). Similarly, Boone (1989) discusses fundamentalism as a type of : By viewing fundamentalism as a tendency, a habit of mind rather than a discrete movement or phenomenon, it is possible to discern a unified body of discourse, a body of discourse arising from belief in the sole authority of an inerrant Bible" (10). This habit of mind is marked understandably so, by the sort of doctrinal fanaticism that comes from the belief that one has access to the literal words of an omnipotent God with the foreclosed power to create, save, or damn.

It is the permeation of this doctrinal fanaticism that leads inevitably to divisions within fundamentalism. With such a range of criteria and the passion to protect the manifestations of the same, differences between fundamentalists arise. 127

Churches split - each claiming an exclusive interpretation of Christianity that will inevitably determine eternal existence. In America alone there are over 1200 registered Christian denominations and Christian affiliated (Smith, 1987). A number of these consider themselves to be the only true church.

The interpretive framework of fundamentalism is a powerful indicator of developmental structures. This central notion will be expounded later. For now it is important to establish the connection between interpretation and doctrine. The fundamentalist hermeneutic is perhaps best described as literalist. The text is taken at face value. The simple reading is usually the correct reading. There is an inherently natural meaning in the text plain to common sense. Such a hermeneutic is popularised in the fundamentalist cliché, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it!". Such interpretive simplicity is the point of departure for many groups along the fundamentalist-liberal continuum. Many evangelicals shun the literalist approach to Scripture opting for a contextualist, systematic or intentionalist interpretation. They share with the fundamentalist an insistence on the infallibility of Scripture while disassociating themselves from the problems of literal interpretation.

Results from the National Church Life Survey reveal such denominational affiliations with interpretive approaches. The Survey presented in Views From the Pews: Australian Church Attenders Speak Out (Kaldor & Powell: 1995) describes three attitudes to the Bible: Literalists: people who believe the Bible is the word of God to be taken literally word for word. Contextualists: people who believe the Bible is the word of God which needs to be read in the context of the times to understand its implications for us today. Valuists: people who believe the Bible is a valuable book, parts of which reveal God's word to us or that it is a valuable book with much to teach us. (xiv) There is a consistent correlation on almost all issues throughout the survey between participant attitudes to the Bible, their denomination, and their response to the question. Almost invariably a high number of similar literalist responses corresponds with a high number of Assemblies of God, Churches of Christ and Baptist responses while a high number of contextualist and valuist 128

responses to a similar issue corresponds with a high number of Anglican, and Uniting Church responses. The interpretation dilemma plagues all textual criticism but as Boone (1989) notes, the stakes are higher for fundamentalists, "because even English students need not worry about the salvation of their souls" (39).

Before engaging the specific content of the fundamentalist discourse as derived from Scripture the nature of this process of derivation must be observed. One must acknowledge the paradoxes and problems that literalists face. It is one contention that Scripture is inerrant, it is another that interpretation (even literalist) is inerrant. The content of Scripture presents many problems for literal interpretation. To avoid these problems the process of literal interpretation is necessarily selective and a matter of emphasis (Barr, 1981). Because fundamentalism can admit no error or contradiction in Scripture it must resort to selective emphasis or holistic interpretation. It is a tendency and necessity of literalist interpretation never to admit contradiction but always to argue due emphasis. However, such emphases often seem to be affected by external socio-cultural variables.

The inevitable socio-cultural differences between fundamentalist churches cause divisions of Scriptural emphasis between such churches. These divisive Scriptural issues include the wearing of head-coverings, the type of music played, the role of women in leadership, the consumption of alcohol, tithing, speaking in tongues, words of , interpretation of prophecy, millennialism, , sexuality, baptism, and the use of the Sabbath - to name but a few. The sheer range and diversity of fundamentalist churches and practices is testament to the problem of simple and literal interpretation. Literalists often disagree over exactly what the simple literal interpretation of a scripture is.

James Barr author of Fundamentalism (1981) rejects the literalist label for fundamentalists on the grounds that fundamentalists constantly change their hermeneutic to protect the inerrancy of Scripture. This is no doubt true as both

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Barr and Boone provide ample evidence. The term literalist used herein refers to a mindset which insists that, objective absolute truth is revealed in detail through language in a way that it perceivable by commonsense, requiring little interpretation.

This mindset often manifests itself in the authoritarian leadership of fundamentalist churches. The pastor or preacher may be seen to have a mandate for the commonsense interpretation of Scripture. If Scripture is inerrant then the interpretative ability of the fundamentalist's preacher must be able to be inerrant in order for the first supposition to be of any significance. This necessity has perhaps led to the fundamentalist tendency to attribute an almost divine sense of authority to particular preachers and teachers. In popular discourse such preachers and teachers are said to be, "anointed" or "inspired" alluding to the status of Old Testament prophets who claimed to proclaim the very words of God.

The empires and audiences of fundamentalists such as Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, and Kenneth Copeland are testament to the fundamentalist need for authoritative interpretation of Scripture. Similarly the success of Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth which sold over 18 million copies, outselling all books except the Bible in the decade of the 1970s reveals a public hunger for authoritative Scriptural interpretation. Lindsey's book interprets Revelation as a literal portrayal of current affairs signaling a literal apocalyptic end to civilisation.

Protestant Fundamentalism: The Bible and the Fundamentals Having recognised both the notion of divine authorship and literal (commonsense) interpretation of Scripture common to fundamentalism one may begin to examine specific Scriptural contents permeating the discourse. Perhaps the most common contents are found in The Fundamentals written between 1910 and 1915. These volumes expounded essential fundamentalist beliefs including the virgin birth, atoning death, bodily resurrection, miracles, the second coming of Christ, and Scriptural inerrancy (Marsden, 1980:118-123).

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While these basic beliefs are shared by many Christians, it is the nature of believing that distinguishes fundamentalists. There is a difference between perceiving the beliefs in a static creedal sense as a basic prerequisite for individual salvation and seeing the beliefs as powerful explanations for powerful experiences and traditions. It is the difference between trivialised knowledge and empowered understanding.

The virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, hellfire, the second coming, Scriptural inerrancy, atonement, the Trinity, and miracles have become the cliches of fundamentalism. Cliches may be powerful explanations of experiences or principles in action. Presumably cliches come into being because they resonate with a popular psyche. However constant repetition becomes habit and habits tend to become over familiar and lose their original meaning or intent. Metaphorically, the cliché becomes empty. This principle points to an initial epistemological assumption of this thesis - that language is the ultimate symbol. To protect the language of belief for its own sake is to idolise it. It is also a point of departure to engage some other distinctive biblical literalisations of the fundamentalist worldview - original sin, heaven and hell, the work of Christ, and the nature of God. Before embarking on such a venture it is important to state and focus intentions for doing so. The purpose of this thesis is not to enter theological debate, rather it is to understand in developmental terms the psychology which may lead to theological debate.

Understanding of Sin Original Sin with all its implications is a deeply entrenched part of the fundamentalist worldview. It is a notion carried throughout the Old and New Testaments. The most familiar text creating this concept is Genesis Chapter 3 - known popularly as, The Fall of Man. In the Genesis story of The Fall, man and woman are deceived into rebellion against God. They are expelled from full communion with God and sin and death enter the world. The literal interpretation of the preceding Genesis creation stories are seen as absolutely necessary to this understanding of sin.

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The fundamentalist believes that any watering down or symbolic understanding of the creation account(s) undermines the notion of Original Sin and thus of the unfolding of the Gospel. It is a moot point as to whether there is a relationship between the literal understandings of early stage structures and the inability to recognise symbolic interpretations of creation accounts. There are too many variables in this debate to discuss it adequately here. Needless to say the total permeation of a literal understanding of the Genesis accounts are advocated for the identification with a fundamentalist worldview (Deckard & Sobko, 1998).

The references of Paul most familiar to the fundamentalist discourse expand this notion of sin and death. In Romans 5:12 Paul links sin to death, "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned". Similarly in Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death". Paul emphasises the sinfulness of all people in Romans 3:10, "There is no one righteous, not even one" and Romans 3:23, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". The fundamentalist canonisation and understanding of these passages forms a foundation for later theological constructs. They are quoted frequently to defend what is known in Calvinistic terms as the total depravity of man. At the base of the fundamentalist worldview is a humanity that is at its core - fallen, depraved, sinful, and rebellious. The said consequences of such a human state reveal the fundamentalist doctrine of heaven and hell.

Understanding of Heaven and Hell Heaven and hell are the quintessential examples of fundamentalist literalisation. All action, all inaction, all living and dying are reduced in the fundamentalist worldview to an exclusive, individual and eternal experience of heaven or hell. The rift between the two is impassable beyond death, hence the fundamentalist antagonism to the notion of purgatory. There is no room for exception in the fundamentalist vision of judgment. Christian apologist and prolific writer Norman Geisler makes the fundamentalist position clear in his Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (1999). He argues for the existence, necessity, horror, and eternity of hell, evidencing his arguments under the

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following headings: Jesus Taught the Existence of Hell...The Bible Teaches That There Is a Hell...God's Justice Demands a Hell...God's Love Demands a Hell...Human Dignity Demands a Hell...God's Sovereignty Demands a Hell...The Cross of Christ Implies a Hell...Hell Will Last as Long as Does God...Hell Will Last as Long as Heaven Does...Reasonableness of hell. (310-315) Geisler's work is widely quoted in fundamentalist circles. He represents the academia of latter twentieth century fundamentalist theology along with authors such as Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, R.C. Sproul, Frank Morris, and Tim LaHaye.

It is necessary and important to make the distinction between fundamentalist doctrine and fundamentalism as defined here. This point will be explored later but it is suffice to state here that the definition of fundamentalism contained herein is as much concerned with the how of believing as with what is believed. There is inevitably a connection but it is a connection explored in this broader context. While not all of these authors would self apply the label of fundamentalist or perhaps even like to be listed in the company of each other, their writings contribute strongly to the rhetoric and maintenance of the fundamentalist discourse.

The conventional passages used to reinforce the rhetoric of heaven and hell include Matthew 25:41, "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'"; Revelation 20:15, "If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire."; Luke 16:23-24, "In hell where he was in torment he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'"; Matthew 10:28, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." In Protestant Fundamentalism, those who 'accept Christ as Lord and Saviour', while on Earth go to Heaven for eternal communion with God, those who do not, go to Hell for eternal punishment. 133

Acceptance of Christ is understood as most evidenced by its verbal proclamation using specific words. As previously noted, perceived acceptance is often subject to a variety of other criteria including speaking in tongues, and Baptism. The essential criteria rarely focus on morality or behaviour because this would amount to the heresy of salvation by works. The result is that the fundamentalist understanding of saving faith becomes far more knowledge based and creedal than behavioural or ethical. Salvation to a fundamentalist is individual, instant, measurable, and final. It is a rescuing from the deservedness of eternal punishment. Salvation to a liberal is contextual, evolutionary, immeasurable, and dynamic. It is a centering of life, progressively leaving behind the hellish consequences of living detached and removed from the nature of God. Each core view is implied in a periphery of popular expressions.

The expressions capturing the core of the fundamentalist worldview include such lines as, "where would you go if you died tonight - heaven or hell?", the popular fundamentalist T-shirt captions - turn or burn, and hell ain't cool, the labelling of fundamentalist preachers as fire and brimstone, the familiar phrase, burden for the lost, popular fundamentalist media such as the Australian play, Hells flames and Heaven's Gates, the evangelical film Burning Hell, and testimonies of instant and dramatic conversion. These are a tiny representative example of core belief in popular expression. It is a contention of this thesis to be later explored that such fundamentalist expression is self-perpetuated at the level of popular expression and seldom critically examined at the core.

Understanding of God The God of the fundamentalist is anthropomorphic. He (the first anthropomorphic instance) is understood literally in human terms. At its simplest, such a view is of a God as a large physical person with the qualities and attributes of the same, extended to include some more supernatural abilities. There are many points of entry for a Christian along the development continuum from literal to symbolic representation. The

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definition of fundamentalism herein is concerned with the former end of the continuum as more descriptive of fundamentalist thinking.

Describing the God of fundamentalism is a difficult if not impossible task. This is because (as is the principle contention of this thesis) the language used for such descriptions may be understood in different ways. The fundamentalist and the liberal both may characterise the deity with love but what is meant, evoked, and felt by the term love may be different to both. Similarly, one may malign the fundamentalist's God as hateful while neglecting the response that such hatred is of hate itself and a necessary element of love. To seek to define the fundamentalist's concept of God with any accuracy one must place a tentative faith in the commonness of sense evoked by the terms of definition. This assumes a particular audience. With this caution in mind a brief definition may be attempted.

The God of the fundamentalist is male and masculine, authoritarian and judgmental, fearsome and protective. He is a God of love but also of a righteous hate extending to the fallen nature of the humans he created, "Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated" (Mal.1:2-3). He is a God who in his perfect knowledge has chosen some and not others. He is a God who in his justice and by necessity of pure character sends people to heaven and to hell. The fundamentalist's God is a God of paradox. He teaches humans to love enemies and not to resist an evil man while vanquishing the enemies of his chosen and threatening the wicked with hell. He offers salvation from sin to all knowing that sin itself will prevent many from being able to hear or respond to the offer. These, he has not chosen. He is the author of all things but not the author of evil. He is a righteous God but righteousness is that which is God. Fundamentalism has a voluntaristic view of God - something is good because God wills it. God's will is known only through Scripture. If God sees fit to punish, to hate, to love, to show mercy as revealed in Scripture then these things are good.

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As such, fundamentalism defends its aggression against all that it is not. All other belief is deception. All other notions of God are false. All who are not saved are eternally lost. As previously mentioned a necessity of any belief held to be true is that that which contradicts it cannot be so. The price of heresy in the fundamentalist mind is eternal and irrevocable punishment.

Understanding of Christ For the fundamentalist Christ is the rescuer. He alone, through a necessary death and vicarious suffering paid the price of sin which had previously separated God from humanity. Not by example, but by a single act of death on a cross in space and time, Christ bridged the otherwise impassable chasm of original sin, thus reconciling God and man. Reform theologian R.C Sproul cites as the inspiration for his apologetic Grace Unknown (1997) a popular hymn by Isaac Watts (1707): Alas! And did my Savior bleed? And did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head For such a worm as I?

Was it for that I have done He groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity grace unknown! And love beyond decree! (Watts In Sproul: 217) It is one example of a multitude of texts embracing this understanding of Christ and reinforcing the fundamentalist discourse:

The culmination of fundamentalist and orthodox theology is expressed in these lines - that believing Christ (who is God) died to save sinful humans from the wrath of God makes this true for the believer. The non-believer's ignorance or rejection of the same leaves them to live out the deserved and eternal consequences of their fallen state. The inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture, the doctrine of sin and of heaven and hell, and the concept of God coordinate in the construction, defence, implications, and outworking of Protestant Fundamentalism.

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Fundamentalism is a real, coherent, and cohesive worldview. It affects the affective and experiential dimensions of faith in powerful ways. Does development result in a restructuring of the contents of this faith? Those most qualified to answer are perhaps those who have experienced both ways of perceiving (structuring) the content of Christianity. They offer a glimpse of fundamentalism with the benefit (and bias) of hindsight.

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2.2.3 Ex-apologetic Approaches to Fundamentalism

If developmental theory is valid then it is impossible to circumvent the structuring tendencies underlying fundamentalism. Nor is it desirable, for these structures are not discarded, they are absorbed. An individual's expression of faith beyond the structures synonymous with fundamentalism will reflect a period of transition from the same to some extent. This is most pronounced in individuals who have lived in environments where faith is clearly articulated in religious forms and the community is defined by its form and content of faith. If fundamentalism represents a socially self-perpetuating stage/s of faith then the few individuals who leave fundamentalism while remaining in the broader religious discourse may offer insights into the process of change. The task of the developmentalist is to see if such attributions for change correspond to stage descriptions formulated beyond the particular fundamentalist context. There is a significant body of literature representing such changes. Australian author, Marlene Winell explores the after-effects of psychological conditioning experienced by ex-fundamentalists in Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion (1993). Edward Babinski compiles accounts of ex-fundamentalists in Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists (1995). Exiled Episcopalian Bishop, John Shelby Spong, and official Presbyterian heretic Peter Cameron offer their own insights in Here I Stand (2000) and Fundamentalism and Freedom (1995) respectively. While these authors represent a variety of discourses on the religious spectrum most have exited Protestant Fundamentalism through a liberalisation of their Christianity. When referring to the Christian faith beyond fundamentalism I have used the term Christian liberalism.

The term Christian liberalism is fraught with difficulties because of its range of expression and the stigma attached to liberalism. I use the term relative to fundamentalism in order to examine the characteristics of those who have left fundamentalism and chosen to remain in the broader Christian discourse. Similarly I have chosen not to use evangelicalism because of its attachment to fundamentalism in some literature (Barr, 1981; Bruce, 1984; Winell, 1991). 138

Christian liberalism is by nature more difficult to define than Christian Fundamentalism. Its nebulousness is often seen as a lack of cohesion and hence as a weakness in the world of creedal, organised and proactively evangelistic Christianity. Bernard Reardon notes, in his introduction to the historically definitive Liberal Protestantism: The word "liberal" is notoriously vague; it can mean more or less, as the case may be, and when applied to Christianity covers a wide variety of opinion as to the truth and value of traditional teachings. (1968:9) At the outset it must be recognised that there are many who passively apply the label liberal with an understanding excluded by the definition expounded herein. The structural developmental context of this thesis warrants a more psychological approach to a definition of liberalism than an historical approach. However, before engaging this approach it is worth noting some of historical archetypes of liberalism.

Viewed as an historical movement, liberalism began in Europe after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Roland Stromberg's account of liberalism in Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth Century England (1954) recognises the period from 1690 to 1740 as one of critical tension between orthodoxy and heterodoxy (1). The ensuing Age of Reason perhaps created an environment for a more organised and institutional liberal movement:

Men (sic) could write boldly on what had long been forbidden save in secrecy. For denying the Trinity, people had been executed but a century before. They were now free to follow where speculation might lead them. (9) The serious challenge science and reason posed to traditional revelational epistemologies of orthodoxy encouraged a reinterpretation and sometimes consequently a renunciation of traditional dogmas.

The challenge of reconciling the new Reason with the revelation of Christ (and all the implications therein) was accepted by many liberal Christian thinkers across Europe and America during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The doctrinal diversity of these thinkers exacerbates the process of defining liberalism in doctrinal terms. However, a brief recount of their thinking

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will serve to evidence a more developmental understanding of liberalism.

In Liberal Protestantism (1968) author Bernard Reardon offers a biographical exploration of liberal thought. For all the difficulty of finding doctrinal cohesion between his biographies they nonetheless provide evidence of a common genesis of liberal thinking - a willingness to explore perennial truths with new words in light of new experience and new knowledge in order to grasp these same truths more deeply. This is a thesis to be returned to later using a structural developmental approach. Of immediate interest is the rhetoric of Reardon's selected liberals that first estranged them from the conservative fold and then (sometimes posthumously) identified them as liberals of their day.

Reardon identifies Albrecht Benjamin Ritschl as belonging to the "the spearhead of the liberal Protestant movement" (1968:20). Ritschl, born in Berlin in 1822, sought to defend the uniqueness of Christ and the Christian experience while being "ready to cut loose from traditional positions in order to impart to Christian theology a new aspect, suited to the age" (Reardon, 1968:34). In his The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (1870) Ritschl traced the historical development of doctrine, laying the groundwork for his own polemic in Theology and Metaphysics (1881) (in Reardon, 1968). The legacy of Ritschl's thought was furthered by the Ritschlian School of thinkers from 1874 beyond 1879 (34). Ritschl was undoubtedly orthodox compared to some more modern liberals choosing to describe themselves as Christian. His liberalism is recognisable in the context of a far more orthodox and conservative society steeped politically and culturally in the traditions of Reformed Christianity.

French liberal, Jean Reville (1854-1907) described liberals as those who "found their beliefs on free inquiry and moral experience" (in Reardon: 51). F.W. Newman, brother of the more famous, John Henry Newman offered an early voice for English liberals in his Phases of Faith (1850) claiming that, "to set up any fixed creed as a test for spiritual character is a most unjust, oppressive, and mischievous superstition" (52). The liberal reluctance even to fix the notion of God in a creed is evident in other sources. 140

In the latter half of the nineteenth century Matthew Arnold challenged the traditional Protestant notion of God by conceiving him as a stream of tendency. R.J. Cambell, minister of the Methodist City Temple in London defined God in The New Theology (1907) as "the mysterious Power which is finding expression in the universe, and which is present in every tiniest atom of the wondrous whole" (55). Other liberals challenged the transcendent view of God.

J.F. Bethune-Baker (1961-1951), professor of at Cambridge was an advocate of immanentist theology, "The historic process of human experience is God's own experience" (56). Hastings Rashdall, echoed such immanentist sentiments in his Christology in Philosophy and Religion (1909):

...we have recognised that in a sense God dwells in and reveals Himself in Humanity at large, and in each particular human soul...If God can only be known as revealed in Humanity, and Christ is the highest representative of Humanity, we can very significantly say 'Christ is the Son of God, very God of God, of one substance with the Father." (in Reardon:57) L.P. Jacks (1860-1955) takes Rashdall's Christology a step further by making the term Christ synonymous with an enigmatic "fellow worker in the pursuit of Eternal Value...If (one) chose to call it Christ, or more simply the Spirit, I should not quarrel with him" (in Reardon:58). In each voice there is a willingness to reinterpret, to explore truth and experience of God beneath transient words.

The liberal movement in America was initiated by William Ellery Channing and popularised in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emmerson (1803-1882). Channing shunned the doctrine of justification as a "whittling down of man's (sic) responsibility as a moral agent" (59). Similarly, Emmerson accentuated the importance of moral responsibility encouraging the individual to seek redemption through an original journey unhampered by preconceived theological models, "even those which are sacred in the imagination of men" (59). Such original journey's of faith do little for the doctrinal cohesion of liberal theology.

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New Testament scholar continued to challenge traditional theistic notions of God throughout the twentieth century as he demythologised Gospel texts in The History of the Synoptic Tradition (1968) and New Testament and Mythology (1985). Bultmann's historical criticism added weight to the earlier notions of Alfred North Whitehead. In Process and Reality (1929) and Religion in the Making (1927) Whitehead offered a conception of God as a divine process rather than an external being.

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned by the Nazi Party during World War II wrote the material for the edited Letters and Papers from Prison (1972). In these papers Bonhoeffer proposed a religionless, nontheistic Christianity. Similarly, Paul Tillich, a refugee from Nazi conceptualised God as the Ground of Being - more immanent and internal than traditional theistic conceptions. Tillich's works are quoted extensively by modern liberals such as Bishop John Shelby Spong. Lecturer in the in the University of Cambridge, Don Cupitt continues to challenge traditional theistic notions of God with his explorations into the constructions of theistic language (1987). Cupitt seeks to redesign for a 'structurally democratic, creedally minimalist, and consistently libertarian' church (1989: Cover).

It is apparent that concrete doctrine is a weak starting point for defining liberalism, suffice to say that a lack of value on dogma and doctrine is one of its defining features. Liberalism in each of the above cases seems to reflect a desire to rediscover meaning lost in the self-perpetuating language of creeds. Before one has a desire to transcend creed, move deeper into the same, or seek to rediscover old intentions lost in the dynamic complexities of language, one must at some point recognise the inadequacy of a model once held to describe a reality now lived. It is this inconsistency that perhaps drives the liberal to redefine, reinterpret, and sometimes to reject. There is also the realisation of one's own ignorance, a partial acognosticism born of an understanding of the at once powerful and inadequate symbolic function of language. All this is against the certainty, absolutism, and provincial cohesion

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of fundamentalism. It is a clash of worldviews that finds ample expression in the works of modern liberals. An examination of the thoughts of such modern liberals will serve finally to locate this definition of liberalism in a current context.

Episcopal Bishop and Harvard lecturer, John Shelby Spong is perhaps both the most popular and controversial liberal of the new millennium. His prolific populist writings have made him the unofficial spokesperson of liberal Christians in an America with a strong fundamentalist heritage. Spong's more popular works Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism (1986), Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998), and his autobiographical Here I Stand (2000) offer a clear expression of liberal identity. Before exploring Spong's own liberal theology it is important to re-emphasise the primary purpose of such exploration as being to highlight the theology's genesis from more basic developmental structures. Spong's Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998) is an elaboration of Twelve Theses under the title, A Call for a New Reformation. These theses are as follows:

1. , as a way of defining God, is dead. God can no longer be understood with credibility as a Being, supernatural in power, dwelling above the sky and prepared to invade periodically to enforce the divine will. So, most theological God-talk today is meaningless unless we find a new way to speak of God.

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So, the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes the divinity of Christ, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian 143

idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.

7. Resurrection is an action of God, who raised Jesus into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8. The story of the ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in Scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behaviour for all time.

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. 11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behaviour- control mentality of reward and punishment. The church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behaviour. 12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination. (Summarised in Spong, 2000:468-469)

Spong justifies and clarifies his claim to be a Christian in the epilogue of Why Christianity Must Change or Die by stating his own creed:

I believe that there is a transcending reality present in the very heart of life. I name that reality God.

I believe that this reality has a bias toward life and wholeness and that its presence is experienced as that which calls us beyond all of our fearful and fragile human limits.

I believe that this reality can be found in all that is but that it reaches self- consciousness and the capability of being named, communed with, and recognised only in human life.

I believe that heaven, the domain in which this reality has traditionally been domiciled, is not a place but a symbol standing for the limitlessness of Being itself.

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I believe that this realm of heaven is entered whenever the barriers that seem to bind human life into something less than that for which it is capable are set aside.

I believe in Jesus, called Messiah or Christ.

I believe that in his life this transcendent reality has been revealed so completely that it caused people to refer to him as God's son, even God's only son... I believe that Jesus was a God presence, a powerful experience of the reality of that Ground of Being undergirding us all at the very depths of life. (1999:220- 221)

Spong's reinterpretation of the Apostolic Creed and his theses against Orthodoxy are tied closely to his understanding of the function and limitations of language. The existence of such a connection between linguistic understanding, faith, and structural development is a foundational assertion of this thesis. As such it will be analysed and expounded in more detail in a later chapter. However Spong's own observations on this relationship provide a lucid introduction to this concept of language and liberalism. Speaking of the New Testament narrative Spong states:

It was an interpretation based upon the theistic concepts of God present in that era of human history. The language employed the vocabulary of a premodern, non-scientific world. There was no other alternative for processing the God experience in the first century of the common era. That interpretive language was then incorporated into our creeds, our , our prayers, and our theological concepts. It is this language that has become all but nonsensical. The frame of reference that produced those understandings of reality has disintegrated. (1998: 222-223)

Spong continues, expressing what in many forms is an understanding motivating many liberal thinkers:

The words, the concepts, and the theological reasoning by which they interpreted their experiences have all become empty and meaningless. To reject that interpretive language was inevitable, but to reject the interpretive language is not to deny the power of the experience. (225) 145

Spong's understanding of the interpretive problem of religious language is echoed in the writings of another liberal author - Dr Peter Cameron.

Dr Peter Cameron came to Australia as principal of St Andrew's College in the University of Sydney. In 1993 he was convicted of heresy by the Presbyterian Church and removed from his position. In response Cameron wrote an account of this period titled Heretic, Necessary Heresies (1993) and his polemical, Fundamentalism and Freedom (1995). Cameron is aggressive in his attack against fundamentalism.

I don't share the currently fashionable approach among liberal academics, which is to be as charitable and conciliatory as possible, and to stress the pure motives of the Fundamentalist and even the positive contribution which Fundamentalism has made to modern society. (1995:3)

Cameron allocates the weight of his writings to the debunking of fundamentalism. In the latter chapters of Fundamentalism and Freedom responses to questions he is commonly asked provide an insight into the nature of his liberal-labelled beliefs. These beliefs may be explored, likened to Spong's, and used to construct the working definition of liberalism used herein under the understandings of the Bible, God, Christ, and sin.

Understanding of the Bible Liberal Christianity emphasizes the existence, experience and knowledge of God and Truth as preceding and exceeding the Bible. Carl Jung puts this view succinctly when he states, "God stands, omnipotent and free, above His Bible" (in Cameron, 1995:131). God is a priori to Scripture and accessible apart from Scripture. This is a significant conceptual departure from a fundamentalist understanding of the same. For the fundamentalist, access to God (in the salvific sense) is exclusively through Scripture. The logical extension of this concept is that one cannot be a Christian (and therefore have relationship with God) without access to the very words of Scripture. The logic is that one cannot act what one does not believe and believe what one cannot articulate.

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Cameron uses the analogy of the law courts. fundamentalism sets the Bible as the statute on which all laws are to be interpreted. Naturally the establishment of early precedents affects later interpretation. The statutes are not questioned in and of themselves. They are non-negotiable absolutes. By analogy fundamentalists do not question the authority of Scripture. Its absolute and exclusive authority is ultimately arrived at by faith, attestation to its historical accuracy, and its own internal claims to inspiration.

The liberal extension of this analogy views the statute as a result rather than a beginning. To reveal the analogy in Cameron's own words, "It is therefore much more honest... to see the Bible as result rather than beginning." (1995:132). The process of which the Bible is a result is a very human process, subject to the confines of language, the particulars of individual experience and culture, limitations of knowledge, and the peculiarities of context:

In fact, then, the Bible is a collection, a human collection, of very human response to the divine, and it is precisely because of its human characteristics that it can mean so much to us. If it really were literally the word of God it would be unintelligible to us, just as divine music would be meaningless to human ears. To speak or behave, therefore as the Fundamentalist does, as if Christianity is a question of responding to the Bible, is to fail to do justice to what the Bible is - it is itself response. (1995:134) Bishop John Shelby Spong echoes such conceptual understandings in Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and Why Christianity Must Change or Die. He questions the Bible as an unquestionable statute and finds its traditional literal applications as law and precedent, lacking relevance and form in a modern context:

The Bible is not the word of God in any literal or verbal sense...The Gospels are not inerrant works, divinely authored. They were written by communities of faith, and they express the biases of those communities...They reveal changing, evolving theological perspectives...Next, we need to be prepared, when we actually read the texts of the New Testament, to discover that there is an enormous gap between the theological claims that have been made for Jesus in the life of institutional Christianity and the record that was actually contained in the Gospels. (1995:72-3) 147

For the definitive purposes of this thesis it is necessary to summarise and simplify this conceptual difference between fundamentalist and liberal perspectives of the Bible. In essence, for the fundamentalist, the Bible is the exclusive beginning of a relationship with God for all humanity whereas for the liberal, the Bible is the humanly subjective result of a relationship with God. The former negates other expressions of relationship; the latter embraces other expressions of relationship.

Understanding of God

An understanding of God is central to the identity of Christian faith - indeed any faith, though many would prefer not to use the word God for all its cultured connotations. A.W. Tozer expresses such sentiment in The Knowledge of the Holy:

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man's (sic) spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater that its idea of God. (11)

The liberal understanding of God is necessarily linked to its understanding of the Bible. If the Bible is understood as an enculturated response to the divine as Cameron and Spong attest then the liberal concept of God is always more cautious, more basic, more universal, more symbolic than the literal and descriptive definitions of the fundamentalist. Indeed it is the effect of this cautiousness that is most criticised by the fundamentalist. It lends itself to a passive agnosticism or more particularly a sort of ineffectual acognosticism. This is an important criticism to be discussed later. For now, it is duly noted to contextualise the following definition.

The God of the fundamentalist is concrete and anthropomorphic. He is known by the literal descriptions of Him in the Bible. The God of the liberal is "the inescapable centre and depth of all that is" (Spong, 1998:70). In the words of Tillich, God is best conceived of as the Ground of all Being. Cupitt claims that the word God is inextricably linked to the "archetype of the jealous, angry Father" (1989:87). His reinterpreted concept of God is as "the medium in 148

which we live and move and have our being, the dance of signs" (88). Liberal theologian Peter Cameron writes, "It has been said that God cannot be expressed, but only addressed. I'm not sure that he can even be addressed: only embraced" (1995:211). Liberal theology perceives God as closer, more immanent, more inextricable, inseparable, and foundational to life than Orthodox Christianity allows.

Liberal theology led by feminist reflections continues to question the masculine notion of the fundamentalist God:

The fundamental feminist question about the maleness of God in the imagery, symbolism and concepts of traditional Christian thought and prayer leads to new reflection on the doctrine of God. (Carr, 1993:223)

Carr calls the masculine understanding of God a 'tradition analogical understanding that 'stresses the similarity between human concepts and God's own selfhood' (1993:223). She advocates a metaphorical theology that: "Should focus rather on the God-human relationship and on the unlikeness of all religious language in reference to God even as it affirms some similarity" (223). In structural developmental terms the masculinisation of God is the result of Mythic-Literal structures arresting development into metaphorical understandings through the institutionalisation of an idea. At this point the dichotomy between fundamentalist and liberal understandings seem vast enough to pose the question: In what sense is liberal Christianity - Christian?

Understanding of Christianity

Spong poses this obvious question in Why Christianity must Change or Die:

But can Jesus be understood apart from that interpretive theistic context? Has not Christianity continued in our day to set such doctrines as the Incarnation and the Trinity at the very centre of its life? Can Jesus be lifted out of this ancient theological context and still be Lord or Christ for anyone? (1998:71)

Liberalism seeks to reconstruct Christology after the process of deconstruction and demythologising enabled by historical criticism of the Gospels and early Orthodox Christianity. The fundamentals of fundamentalism (The virgin birth, 149

the transfiguration, the incarnation, and even the bodily resurrection of Christ) are powerful but enculturated symbols to the liberal. To believe these as literal truths does not ensure access to eternal salvation, rather an understanding of the construction of these mythologies points to an ethic and a truth powerfully known and lived in the minutiae of life. This is the essential difference between a fundamentalist and a liberal Christology.

Cupitt succinctly reveals this difference in understanding between conservative and liberal Christology in Radicals and the Future of the Church (1989):

The crucial point about the Trinity...is just how far the full co-equality and co-eternity of the Second and Third Persons is an invitation to demythologize...the full coequality and coeternity of the Son means that everything in the Father is, the Son is also. And when the Son completely and irrevocably commits himself to becoming human then God has become human, without remainder. So everything that God is, this fellow human being beside me now is. (87-88)

In fundamentalist understanding Christ is spiritually separate to all humanity - the perfect sacrifice for all alone worthy of worship first for who he was. In liberal understanding Christ is a reflection (even the most perfect reflection) of God in every being, leading the way to worship first for what he did. These two perspectives could perhaps be reconciled logically but as products of different structures they are the expressions of worlds apart.

And so the Gospel of Jesus Christ for a liberal Christian is embedded in all humanity. It is the existential affirmation of purpose beyond both self and death guided by unconditional love and all of its extended implications. It is the sort of Gospel understood by St Francis of Assisi, "Go out and preach the Gospel, and if you must, use words". It need not be articulated, to exist or to bring freedom. Belief as articulated propositional knowledge is after the fact.

Understanding of Sin Another significant difference between fundamentalist and liberal understanding centres on the notion of sin. For a fundamentalist sin is understood primarily as depravation, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). 150

The moral corruption of the human condition is not reconcilable with the purity of God. Such depravity necessitates punishment. All are deserving of the most eternal punishment for rebellion against God. Salvation is through the penal substitution, the vicarious sacrifice of Christ on the cross. To receive this salvation one must understand it. One cannot understand unless one has heard the Gospel. If one does not hear the Gospel then one was not (in the wisdom of God) chosen to be saved. This is the inevitable conclusion of a Calvinistic fundamentalism based on a very literal and canonical interpretation of select passages including the aforementioned Romans 10:13-15: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? (NIV, 1983:2046) It is in this context and against this definition that the liberal understanding of sin may be generalised as emphasising deprivation rather than depravation.

Sin viewed as deprivation emphasises pity ahead of punishment, compassion ahead of retribution, ignorance ahead of intention, and remorse ahead of guilt while maintaining the severity of sin's effects and its absolute opposition to the character of God. Nineteenth century theologian and prolific author, George MacDonald exemplifies the liberal view insisting that Christ came to save people from their sins, and not from the punishment for their sins: Christ died to save us, not from suffering, but from ourselves; not from injustice, far less from justice, but from being unjust. (in Raeper, 1987:252) MacDonald recognised the ideological power of the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice and penal substitution calling it: ...a mean, nauseous invention, false and productive of falsehood...It is the meagre, misshapen offspring of the legalism of a poverty-stricken mechanical fancy, unlighted by a gleam of the divine imagination...Better the reformers had kept their belief in purgatory, and parted with what is called vicarious sacrifice. (In Raeper, 252) MacDonald despised the Victorian notion of hell as the ultimate deterrent from sin. His notion of hell was as a place of purification, not of punishment.

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Spong echoes these sentiments in a chapter entitled Jesus as Rescuer: An Image that has to go from his book Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998). Spong incorporates MacDonald's notion of penal substitution under the doctrine of atonement - the view that the death of Christ was necessary for the restoration of God's work after the fall of creation into the original sin. He identifies the manifestation of the academic theology of the cross in such common expressions found in fundamentalist discourse as: Jesus died for my sins. He shed his precious blood on the cross of Calvary for my salvation. I have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Through the sacrifice of Jesus, I have been saved. The stain of sin on my soul has been cleansed. (1999:83-84) The liberal, as defined in fullest expression by the likes of Spong and Cupitt, perceives sin as a lack of wholeness, a necessary evil from which we "struggle to become our deepest and truest selves" (Spong, 1998:97). The liberal view of salvation therefore is of a predictable process of cause and effect girded definitively by God, the Ground of Being. The liberal's view of salvation is of a far more mundane and holistic evolution of self relative to the instantaneous salvation of fundamentalism through conversion and the experience of being born again.

Summary Liberalism has been defined factoring its perception of the Bible, its understanding of God, its Christology, and its concept of sin. These factors are inextricably linked. They by no means constitute an exclusive list of liberal tendencies. They do however form a core that gives meaning to the periphery of the liberal discourse.

Liberalism as defined herein, can never be equated exclusively with a set of doctrinal propositions. However, the logical outworking of its structure will favour some contents and oppose others. Doctrine is a means to an end and not an end in and of itself. Doctrine, as that which is articulated and believed enables reflection. Doctrine exists in relationship with other forms of knowledge and action. It is not the source of all knowledge and action. 152

The definitive factor of liberalism is its discrimination between the symbol and symbolised. Its doctrinal propositions are expressed in close relation to this understanding. Unless the doctrinal outworking of liberalism is based on this discriminative ability they may just as easily be held with a fundamentalist mindset. This dynamic and interdependent relationship between doctrinal contents and the ways in which they are held and understood is a central understanding of Christian liberalism as defined in this thesis.

This exists in contrast to fundamentalism as formerly defined. The contents of fundamentalism lend themselves to the subordination of all forms of understanding. Fundamentalist belief is static, content based and exclusive. Liberal belief is dynamic, form based, and reconciliatory. Fundamentalists view liberals as holding contaminated beliefs. Liberals see this contamination as rather the recognition of common experience with different expressions (the universal in the particular) mixed with a degree of cognitive humility.

Development, Structure and Content in liberalism and fundamentalism The remaining questions concern the interaction between structure and content in the process of development. Can liberal contents be held fundamentalistically and vice-versa? Can a child be a liberal in the definitive sense of this thesis? The anticipated answers to these questions are "yes" and "no" respectively. The following discussion provides the foundation for an answer.

As noted in the thesis rationale the relationship between contents of faith and structures of faith is multidimensional and infinitely complex. To say that such a relationship did not exist would be to deny a basic premise of structural development. To say that the relationship was totally and absolutely interdependent would be to ignore the biological, maturational facets of development and to surrender oneself to a theory of pure socialisation. However, consistent with Fowler's structural developmental discourse it may be

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acknowledged that, "...readiness for structural change is in part a function of biological maturation and of psychosocial, cognitive and moral development" (1981:276). Fowler divides the contents of faith affecting and affected by this structural change, into three areas: centres of value, images of power; and master stories (276). For the purposes of this section the discussion will be confined to master stories of fundamentalism and liberalism.

Master stories, "are the characterizations of the patterns of the power-in-action that disclose the ultimate meanings of our lives" (Fowler, 1981:277). In the context of fundamentalism master stories are expressed formally in creed and theology. The master stories of liberalism are less developed and less structured. Liberalism is process definitive rather than content definitive. Liberalism shares as powerful symbols the literal truths of fundamentalism. The underlying structural difference between the two necessitates a difference in the relative willingness of each to use particular contents in particular ways for particular purposes. In principle, structures filter master stories. They emphasise some contents, reject others for fear of misinterpretation and loss of symbolic power, and develop comfortably and qualitatively within others.

Fowler exemplifies this principle within the Christian tradition succinctly without exploring it in detail: Within a given faith tradition, say Christianity, appropriations of the Christian story and vision will be shaped in important ways by the structural stage of the theologian or community doing the appropriating. The apocalypticism of Hal Lindsay's The Late, Great Planet Earth organizes the content of Christian faith in a way designed to appeal most to Mythic-Literal or very early Synthetic- Conventional faith. Robert Schuller's television preaching and writings represent a presentation of culture-Christianity aimed dominantly at Synthetic- Conventional listeners. C.S. Lewis's apologetic writings aim, if I am an accurate judge, to bring sophisticated agnostics and conventional Christians to decide for commitment to Jesus Christ understood in the framework of an Individuative- Reflective faith. James Cone's early theology aimed at calling Synthetic- Conventional black Christians into self-awareness and passionate solidarity for justice in terms of Individual-Reflective commitments. (1981:301)

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Each of these people represents different stage structures within the meta- narrative (story) of Christianity. The problem is that the bearers of earlier stages may well question the theological legitimacy of the bearers of latter stages and the latter the maturity of the former.

The above reflection provides the context for an answer to the initial questions: can a child be a liberal Christian; and can liberal contents be held fundamentalistically and vice-versa? The answer to the first is no inasmuch as it is unlikely for a child to have developed formal operations. This assumes an holistic definition of liberalism - broader than belief. A child socialised in a liberal context may well articulate liberal statement beliefs. This anticipates an answer in the affirmative to the second question. As beliefs are the tip of the holistic paradigmatic iceberg they may well be poor representation of what lies beneath. There are more reasons (beyond actually believing something) for saying that something is believed. Having given these answers it is necessary to maintain that structures do lend themselves to particular beliefs assuming that these beliefs are understood in fullness of their symbolism rather than by the rote and repetition of socialisation.

While fundamentalism as affiliated with Mythic-Literal and early Synthetic- Conventional structures lends itself to the latter (the rote and repetition of socialisation) it is important to note that there are limited channels for development within the emphasised contents of fundamentalism. Fowler calls these "Adult versions". In speaking of societies 'untroubled by the issues raised by pluralism' he writes: Undoubtedly in such societies adult persons construct dimensions and directions of richness within the structural frames of the Intuitive or Mythic styles that children in societies that sponsor movement to later stages never develop. (1981:299) This is a caution not to oversimplify the stage-content relationship within fundamentalism and liberalism. Such a caution provides an appropriate conclusion to this conceptual synthesis.

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To repeat and expand the central thesis, fundamentalism may be conceptualised as a manifestation of early developmental structuring tendencies within the socio-religious context of a meta-narrative. A meta- narrative is a metaphysical belief system able to subordinate all other contents. Social dynamics characteristic of fundamentalist communities, and mechanisms maintaining cognitive consonance tend to perpetuate stage equilibrium and arrest further development.

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2.2.4 Protestant Socio-Historical Approaches to Fundamentalism

The socio-historical approach to Protestant fundamentalism traces its origins and development in space-time. It is a focus on the particulars of a fundamentalism rather than a derivation of underlying particulars that could be generalised to identify other fundamentalisms. Such treatments are essential, because they provide detail and concrete examples of content, without which theory cannot be generated of effectively substantiated.

James Barr's, Fundamentalism (1981), George Marsden's, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism (1980) and Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (1991), and Ernest Sandeen's The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American millenarianism, 1800-1930 (1970), each provide historically descriptive accounts of a Protestant fundamentalism focussed on a particular epoch in American history. Such historical definitions of Protestant Fundamentalism tend to trace its throughout the twentieth century identifying historically definitive events. Such events include the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909 and The Fundamentals between 1910 and 1915. Similarly, the Evangelical Revivals, the Scopes Trial of 1925, the televangelist empires, and fundamentalist movements such as Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's 700 Club are primary concerns of the historical approach. These examples of fundamentalism are linked by their common genesis from a belief in Biblical inerrancy, and consequent distrust of modernity.

Fundamentalism with a capital F, was coined in America during the second decade of the twentieth century. In 1910, a group of Princeton Presbyterians issued five fundamental dogmas for the Christian faith: (1) the inerrancy of Scripture, (2) the Virgin Birth of Christ, (3) Christ's atonement on the cross for sin, (4) the bodily resurrection of Christ, and (5) the objective truth of miracles. The five dogmas were in part a reaction to the increasing voices of the liberal

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Protestant movement. Between 1910 and 1915 the dogmas were reinforced when conservative theologians produced a series of twelve pamphlets known as The Fundamentals. Financed by oil millionaires Lyman and Milton Stewart, nearly three million copies of each pamphlet were distributed to , academics, and theology students in America. The Fundamentals provided a rallying point for the conservatives against the perceived evils of , liberalism, the so called higher criticism, and perhaps the most notorious of all - .

Fundamentalism, recognised as such, was a reactionary movement to the modernism of the 1920s. It began as a movement between evangelical Christians deeply convinced of a in American culture. The movement spread to embrace a number of traditions including evangelicalism, pietism, millenarianism, Reformed confessionalism, Baptist traditionalism, and revivalism. George Marsden in Fundamentalism and American culture observes that: Fundamentalism was a "movement" in the sense of a tendency or development in Christian though that gradually took on its own identity as a patchwork coalition of representative of other movements. Although it developed a distinct life, identity, and eventually a subculture of its own, it never existed wholly independently of the older movements from which it grew. (1980:4) Marsden's observation supports the use of fundamentalism as encapsulating a movement common to many denominations. Modern Christianity seems too eclectic to separate totally the dimensions and dynamics of fundamentalism from evangelicalism or . This is certainly the case (to be made in detail later) in the school community studied. This community served as a melting pot for many Protestant traditions.

The modernism and secularisation to which fundamentalism was a response, was identified in several mutually dependent forms. The theory of evolution, the relativisation of morality, and the modernism of biblical criticism were the primary social evils targeted by fundamentalists.

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The fundamentalist reaction was expressed in twelve paperback volumes published between 1910 and 1915. The volumes known as The Fundamentals were authored by an array of conservative scholars from both America and Britain. On completion, three million individual volumes were distributed. The Fundamentals was composed of articles dedicated to the defense of Scripture, traditional apologetics, and against various modern isms (Marsden,1980:120). These documents provide an historical starting point for a description of the Protestant Fundamentalist movement. To cover this history is not the intention of this thesis. What is of primary importance are the principles on which the socio-historical authors of fundamentalism have defined the movement. Do these principles conform or deviate from developmental descriptions? What problems do they pose for the developmental discourse?

George Marsden's Fundamentalism and American culture (1980) and Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (1991) are the products of his intensive studies of the movement in the 1970s and 1980s. His treatment of fundamentalism enlightens the developmental understanding.

Marsden differentiates between fundamentalism and evangelicalism. He describes this distinction somewhat poetically by quoting Jerry Falwell's own slogan, "a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something" (1991:1). Marsden deals with the two movements separately as is necessary when applying definitions as they have been used historically. The developmental definition of fundamentalism focusses more on its theological and psychological intersection with evangelicalism. Cohen (1988) contends, that a fundamentalist is an evangelical who takes their biblical beliefs to their logical literal extremes. Falwell's slogan is subtly revealing of fundamentalism's tendency to see evangelicals as too moderate, or not realising the full implications of Scripture. In developmental terms, Shinn (In Selvidge, 1984) argues that: Fundamentalism manifests characteristics of stage 3. In a more enlightened form or phase, commonly called evangelicalism, it manifests a few of the characteristics of stage 4. (92) A developmental approach perceives Marsden's socio-historical movements 159

(as he calls them) as phylogenetic manifestations of a stage transition within the Christian tradition.

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2.2.5 Multi-Religious Approaches to Fundamentalism

Adding strength to the theory of structure interacting with faith, is the significant body of work identifying fundamentalism as a multi-religious phenomenon. In Fundamentalisms Observed (1991), Marty and Appleby edit a collection of accounts of fundamentalisms from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Confucian and Sikh traditions. What are the common characteristics that inspire such a project? How do these characteristics support or problematise the developmental approach?

Marty and Appleby defend the use of the term fundamentalism: No other coordinating term was found to be as intelligible or serviceable. And attempts of particular essayists to provide distinctive but in the end confusing accurate alternatives led to the conclusion that they were describing something similar to what are here called fundamentalisms. (1991:viii) The introductory chapter characterises fundamentalism as fighting back, fighting for, fighting with, fighting against, and fighting under (ix-x). Marty and Appleby conclude their substantial volume with the chapter, An Interim Report on a Hypothetical Family. Throughout this chapter they collate the characteristics of the fundamentalisms observed. For the convenience of review, each characteristic is italicised and then discussed in relation to the developmental approach.

Religion of the community is the irreducible basis for communal and personal identity (817). Revealed truth is whole, unified, and undifferentiated (818). Fundamentalisms seize upon particular historical moments, matched to sacred texts and traditions, and interpreted according to an calculation of time and space (819): The epistemology of Piaget's concrete operational stages is concrete, absolute and centrated (Miller, 1993). Such thought is intolerant of different or other particulars (fundamentalisms) because it cannot differentiate its own from the whole of truth.

Absolutist literalist hermeneutic (819), Containing dramatic eschatologies (819),

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Fundamentalisms arise or come to prominence in times of crisis, actual or perceived (822): As discussed in a later section, commentators approaching fundamentalism from a psycho-apocalyptic perspective (Strozier, 1994; Halsell, 1989) note its characteristic literalisation of apocalyptic literature. Such literal interpretations of the apocalypse perpetuate a sense of imminent danger and crisis in which fundamentalism thrives. Marty and Appleby, themselves note the connection: The richly symbolic and connotative scriptural descriptions of the Final Age are often reduced by fundamentalists to denotative blueprints of the order to come, demystified in the service of detailing the concrete plan of action required for socio-political ends. (837) As evidenced in a later section on hermeneutic approaches to fundamentalism, the literalist hermeneutic is a distinctive of concrete operational text-type- perceptions (Oser and Gmünder, 1991:158).

Fundamentalists name, dramatise and even mythologise their enemies (820): The demonisation of the other serves to distance encounters and perpetuate the myth in the absence of evidence. Fundamentalists set boundaries, protect the group from contamination, and preserve purity (821): The demonisation of enemies and the boundaries and mechanisms of self-protection serve to isolate fundamentalist communities from encounters necessary to facilitate the developmental aspects of social awareness and perspective-taking. Such isolation and demonisation arrests development in these aspects.

Fundamentalists seek to replace existing structures with a comprehensive system (824): Fundamentalism applies the particulars of its revelation or enculturated authority as a total ideology. This is synonymous with the episodic, narrative-dramatic, and system felt meanings of early stage world coherence in which participants do not differentiate between the ultimate and the particular.

Reaffirm old doctrines as ideological weapons against a hostile world (826), Charismatic and authoritarian male leaders (826), Mass appeal of fundamentalism (830): Fundamentalism reflects mass submission to textual, 162

or human (text-interpreting) authority. The submission to traditional, charismatic, or male authority (as reasons for submission) is indicative of early stages of the developmental aspect - locus of Authority. The stages are characterised by attachment dependence relationships based on size, power, visible symbols of authority (charisma?), and incumbent acceptance of authority roles.

The treatment of fundamentalism in diverse religions raises an important developmental issue. The issue serves to highlight the developmental understanding imputed throughout this thesis. There are two types of fundamentalists in the popular sense. It is a contention of this thesis that the broader base of fundamentalists reflect early stages of development. This is the group that adheres to the contents and particulars of its faith because it knows no other way. A second group of fundamentalists, are those who have glimpsed the developmental crisis of identity that universalisation can bring. It is a glimpse of the "vortex of nihilism" that Boone (1989) alludes to. In faith development terms, some experience the temporary alienation and hopelessness of relativism as permanent, and retreat to the security of the particular with renewed conviction. They have not recapitulated their contents through more developed structures, they have retreated to their contents, unwilling to restructure. It is a transitional crisis resolved by regression to equilibrium. The importance of the distinction is the recognition that fundamentalisms are real responses to real crises on both ontogenetic and phylogenetic levels. The total rejection of the particular, from which the latter group retreat, is perhaps as developmentally arresting as the absolute and exclusive acceptance of the particular.

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2.2.6 Epistemological Approaches to Fundamentalism

An interesting approach to fundamentalism seeks cohesion and explanation in terms of competing epistemologies. Karen Armstrong (2000) represents this approach most extensively while other researchers (Bruce 1984; Momen, 1992) have utilised it briefly.

Moojan Momen, explains the dichotomy between fundamentalism and liberalism in terms of cognitive styles. Momen (1992) describes fundamentalist cognition as convergent, field-independent, objectivist and absolutist, in relation to a liberal cognition that is divergent, field-dependent, subjectivist and relativist. Such interpretation is absorbed in the developmental approach with the distinction that the capacity for divergent thought is a characteristic of a developing mind. However, divergent thought does not replace convergent thought. Developing structures incorporate, rather than discard the capacities of structures underlying fundamentalism.

Steve Bruce, examines divisions between Christian movements as allegiances to different sources of salvific knowledge (1984:5). He associates each group with its proximate source of authority. Liberal Protestantism is proximate to reason and culture. Conservative Protestantism is proximate to the Bible. Catholic and Orthodox Christianity is proximate to the Church. Charismatic and Pentecostal movements are proximate to the Spirit. The epistemological division is insightful. In developmental terms, the Church, the Bible, Culture, and the Spirit respectively, possibly represent competing phylogenetic representations of complementing and developing ontogenetic epistemologies.

Religious commentator Karen Armstrong's most recent work, The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2000) combines a multi-religious historical definition of fundamentalism with an epistemological approach. Armstrong describes the existence of a dynamic tension between mythos and logos motivating the fundamentalist reaction to modernity. Mythos concerns matters of meaning rather than practicalities. It is concerned with the

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"origins of life ... the foundations of culture and ... the deepest levels of the human mind" (xiii). Logos concerns "rational, pragmatic, and scientific thought ... [it] must relate exactly to facts and correspond to external if it is to be effective" (xiv). Armstrong's concepts of mythos and logos represent alternative epistemologies and hence serve to combine historical and epistemological definitions of fundamentalism.

Armstrong's epistemological treatment of fundamentalism seems more sociological than psychological. Her concepts of mythos and logos seem to operate more as social facts than individual states of consciousness. Her discussion of the social manifestations of mythos and logos is compatible with and enlightening of the developmental approach. A core contention of this thesis has been that ontogenetic development may be manifested and captured in phylogenetic socio-historical forms that in turn affect ontogenetic development. History is in part a developmental dialectic between stages of development (Oser & Gmünder, 1991). Armstrong's epistemologies reflect stage capacities - mythos develops before logos: Unlike myth, which looks back to the beginnings and to the foundations, logos forges ahead and tries to find something new: to elaborate on old insights, achieve a greater control over our environment, discover something fresh, and invent something novel. (2000:xv) Armstrong's valuation of both epistemological types serves to enlighten the developmental metaphor. Development is not independently successive, it is dependently incremental. In Fowler's terms, the universal and the particular are of equal importance - they exist symbiotically. In Cohen's terms, non-fantasy and fantasy are not mutually exclusive. In Armstrong's terms, the mythos and the logos are "both essential...regarded as complementary ways of arriving at truth" (xiii)". The developmental nature of this relationship is a core understanding of the thesis.

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2.2.7 Hermeneutic Approaches to Fundamentalism

Protestant fundamentalism has been described as the outworking of a particular hermeneutic. Is this justifiable? Does it challenge or support a developmental approach?

Kathleen Boone, author of The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism (1989) explores fundamentalism as a textual approach or text centred reading practice. Boone argues that the fundamentalist approach to all forms of narrative is predominantly literal: Ask anyone what distinguishes fundamentalist interpretation from that of other Bible readers, and you are likely to be told that fundamentalists take the Bible literally. Asked what that means, fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist alike will agree that literalistic reading is based on "common sense," with hidden" or "deeper" meanings rejected in favor of the "plain" or "obvious" sense. (1989:39) She goes on to define such literal interpretation as containing the assumptions that any verse may shed light on and be linked to another, and that the Bible "is a repository of rational propositions and empirical information". Coupled with a belief in inerrancy and infallibility fundamentalism is antagonistic to Higher Criticism - historical criticism, form criticism and redaction criticism.

James Barr explores this fundamentalist hermeneutic in considerable detail. He contends that fundamentalism is selectively literalist and therefore equally relativist. He maintains that what is distinctive about fundamentalism is inerrancy, which it maintains with an alternating hermeneutic. Boone attribute Barr's explanation to the fact that his study of fundamentalism was focussed on scholarly evangelical intellectuals (45). The distinction is important in developmental terms.

Developmentalists Oser and Gmünder (1991) claim that "Each developmental stage provides a different frame for comprehension, interpretation, and change" (140). They observe a trend of text-type-perception in studies of Bible text interpretation, noting that:

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Elementary school pupils perceive parables as "mere stories," while students on the verge of Piaget's formal-operational stage of cognition exhibited the ability to interpret the texts properly according to their literary type, i.e., as parables. (158) The evidence for such stage specific hermeneutics comes from the fields of literary and developmental semiotics (155). Developmental theories posit the concretisation of text perception in early stages. The contextual forms of text are not recognised as such. A child or a second language speaker may not recognise the context of a subtle joke or figure of speech, instead taking it literally or seriously.

Boone's assessment of the fundamentalist hermeneutic reflects this point: Thus, when fundamentalists champion the truth of scripture, they do so by exploiting the popular assumption that myths or fables cannot be "true". Similarly, their literalistic interpretation of tropes reflects the even more popular assumption that the concrete sense of a passage is its true sense. (47) Perhaps the most substantiating claim to the fundamentalist hermeneutic comes from America's most prominent fundamentalist - Jerry Falwell: Ask an Evangelical whether or not he believes there are flames in hell, and after a thirty-minute philosophical recitation on the theological implications of eternal retribution in light of the implicit goodness of God, you will still not know what he really believes. Ask a Fundamentalist whether he believes there are really flames in hell and he will simply say, "Yes, and hot ones too!" (in Boone:47) The developmental contention is that their respective answers or reticence to answer has much to do with their stages of ontogenetic development and the phylogeny of which they are part. The former sees the concreteness of language describing hell while the latter questions the intention of the concept of hell in the gospel narrative.

Scholarly fundamentalism-evangelicalism is caught in a hermeneutic trap. If it concedes the non-literality of one text held traditionally to be literal (i.e. the six- days of Creation) then it exposes itself to the ridicule of "common-sense" fundamentalists. Such scholarship is bound by its presuppositions to protect the authority and inerrancy of Scripture. Thus, it is caught between the

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expectations of traditional literal interpretations and the inevitable need to re- interpret some of these understandings in light of incontrovertible evidence rendering literal interpretation impossible - all the while protecting the inerrancy of text. This plight is further problematised by the need to maintain that the gospel is clear to all, plain for all to see, and in the words of Paul - that God is not the author of confusion.

The popular fundamentalist uses Scripture in a way that is often suspect to the scholarly fundamentalist. The developmental conundrum for the latter is this: if sound doctrine, formulated by a sound hermeneutic is the surest outward sign of salvation then those who have the structural tendency to interpret Scripture otherwise are not assured of their Salvation. Under the weight and seriousness of salvation this hermeneutic becomes elitist. Bound by inerrancy to a deterministic, positivist, one-dimensional interpretation, somewhat ironically different churches divide sharply as to what that interpretation is. Perhaps, such division is testament to a developing hermeneutic.

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2.2.8 Psychological Approaches to Fundamentalism

There are several approaches to fundamentalism that may be classified as adopting a psychological discourse. Cohen's theory of synergistic mind-control (1988); Vogt's pathological analysis (1995); and Winell's psychotherapeutic approach (1993) represent unity and diversity within the psychological discourse. Each of these approaches serves to shed light on a developmental approach.

Edmund D. Cohen introduces The Mind of the Bible-Believer (1988) with his general thesis of Evangelical Christianity in the context of psychology: Despite the concentration of emphasis on the Bible in what follows, this is essentially a psychology book. My contention is that the Bible is history's most successful psychological manipulation, achieving with uncanny facility what motivational researchers and psychological warfare experts of our own day have only dreamed of. (7) Cohen is content to use Evangelical Christianity where I have used fundamentalism because he sees all Bible-based Christianity as leading to pathology.

In essence, Cohen sees fundamentalism as a form of evangelicalism that is truer to the assumptions and Biblical basis that evangelicalism holds. The basis for his uncompromising treatment of Bible-based Christianity is the pathology he contends it breeds. In evidencing this contention, Cohen quotes Conway and Siegelman's study on cults: Of forty-eight groups in our study...more than thirty...had emerged out of fundamentalist or other branches of conservative Christianity. Moreover, these thirty Christian sects combined ranked higher than the most destructive cults we studied in terms of the trauma they inflicted upon their members. Long-term effects included emotional problems such as depression, suicidal tendencies and feelings of guilt, fear and humiliation, and mental disorders such as disorientation, amnesia, nightmares, hallucinations and delusions. (in Cohen: 164) Cohen identifies two reasons for the pathological effects of Bible-based 169

Christianity and seven devices of mind control. To understand and critique his two reasons and seven devices in the context of developmentalism one must first understand Cohen's definition of a healthy and normative psychology.

According to Cohen, a healthy, normal psychology is characterised by "productive use of fantasy to come to terms with non-fantasy" (152). He uses non-fantasy to avoid the stigma of positing a reality. He identifies a basic human teleological drive to come to terms with the non-fantasy. This drive is facilitated and enabled through cognitive freedom to interrelate the experiences, events, stories, and images of life. There is a distinct similarity between Fowler's description of the coordinating function of faith and Cohen's necessary relatedness. How does fundamentalism affect the process of interrelation?

Cohen argues in a somewhat Kantian fashion that all humans have a deeply felt innate sense that the freedom of interrelatedness is important and true. He calls this conscience or an aura of reality. The pathology of fundamentalism- evangelicalism lies in its valuation of ideology over the sense of interrelatedness. Cohen argues that the underlying non-fantasy desire for interrelatedness is broken by evangelicalism in two ways: (1) the detachment of fantasy from non-fantasy such that the process of mediated relatedness is broken and (2) the demonisation (taboo) of interrelatedness beyond the confines of the provincial fantasy (163). He asserts that even the believer has a repressed sense of this reality (162). When this desire for total interrelatedness escapes the inevitably non-sufficient parametres of the evangelical discourse it experiences a profound crisis. This crisis gives rise to the pathological symptoms previously identified. Cohen posits seven devices of mind-control that collectively repress the aura of reality.

Before summarising these devices in light of developmental tendencies it is necessary to ask whether Cohen's theory thus far is compatible with developmental theory? As previously noted, Fowler's concept of faith and Cohen's concept of meaningful interrelatedness are very similar. I find little contradiction between them. While Cohen does not consider the notion of

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stages he implies that normal continuing human function lies in the honesty with which the teleological need for interrelatedness is met. This supports, rather than discounts the possibility of stages but it also adds a very significant insight to the understanding of developmental stages.

The insight Cohen unknowingly provides is that the sense of interrelatedness, as unconsciously experienced by the individual is not stage dependent. A healthy interrelating individual may exist at any stage. However, Fowler's theory of development enlightens Cohen's theory by revealing that the scope of interrelation changes the more the faculties enabling integration develop. For Cohen, this development occurs through fantasy; for Fowler, it occurs through the particulars of content. For both, it is arrested, when content itself over-rides the process. Fowler call this arrest, Freud calls it repression and Cohen calls it mind-control. While Cohen and Freud tend to equate religions with such arrest, Fowler (1981), like Spong (1999) and Cameron (1995) seek to verify the possibility of development within religious tradition.

Cohen argues that such an attempt to remain within the broader discourse as a liberal reflects a certain sentimental naivete. He believes that Christian liberalism is merely a stage in the realisation that the whole is corrupt. He argues that well-intentioned liberals prolong the mind control by defending the very value of Scripture that they seek to escape (165). While this is a legitimate point, Cohen could perhaps be accused of failing to see the healthy integrative power of Christian concepts. While he is correct in recognising that liberals are not Christians in any Orthodox sense, he does not acknowledge that Christianity, like any other fantasy (perhaps more so) can serve to reveal the non-fantasy that Cohen is so eager to protect. This could in part, reflect Cohen's theory of Christianity as an orchestrated conspiracy; a synergism (138) of mind-control.

Cohen details seven devices of evangelical mind control in the latter part of his book. The seven devices are: (1) The benign, attractive persona of the Bible, (2) Discrediting "the world", (3) Logocide, (4) Assaulting integrity, (5)

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Dissociation induction, (6) Bridge burning, and (7) Holy terror. These devices provide excellent descriptions of the means of stage arrest in fundamentalism. As such, they will be revisited and applied in later sections. All devices are reflected in Winell's (1993) observations of recovering fundamentalists. Devices (2 and 7) are especially consonant with Strozier's analysis of apocalypticism in fundamentalism.

Device (1), The attractive persona of the Bible, refers to the tendency for Christians to proclaim the whole of Scripture in terms of its most benign and benevolent parts. The total authority of the Bible is allowed to go unchallenged because only the most benevolent socially acceptable parts of it are centred in the discourse. Cohen argues that the few intellectually honest who give themselves to the whole of Scripture are often characterised by the most undesirable aggressive and chauvinistic behaviours. There is perhaps some correlation here to Marty's (1991) broader characterisation of fundamentalism as militant and aggressive.

Device (2), Discrediting "the world", refers to the demonisation of unbelievers and the eschewing of any credibility in scholarship or thinking beyond the Bible such that outside ideas are rarely entertained or examined for compatibility. Device (3), Logocide, (literally, the killing of words) refers to "The Biblical assault on key words, loading them with ponderous, contrived, dissonant meanings" (186). Device (4), Assaulting integrity, refers to mechanisms that repress honest feelings, thoughts, and doubts that the believer may have by demonising them. Device (5), Dissociation induction, is the effect of dispossessing the "evidence of one's own faculties by the commands of others, or peer group pressure”(261). Device (6), Bridge Burning, refers to the severance of social ties that would yoke the believer with the unbeliever. Cohen argues that the resultant isolationism reduces the chances of empathy and dialogue. Device (7), Holy terror, refers to the fear factor that motivates conversion and discourages deconversion. The punishing God with the power to send the unbeliever to a literal hell and control all manner of earthly woes is the source of this fear. In developmental terms these devices serve to arrest

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development by insulating the believer from unbelievers and the accompanying opportunities for introspection.

Testing such theory are the experiences and reflections of those in direct psychotherapeutical contact with ex-fundamentalists. The work of Winell (1993), and Vogt (1995) provides empirical and reflective support for Cohen's pathological grounds of critique. Winell identifies similar psychological manipulations to Cohen. In a chapter titled, Recognizing manipulations she explores fear manipulations (Cohen's holy terror), guilt manipulations, denigration of self (integrity assault), denigration of the world (discrediting the world), group pressure (bridge burning), the power of authority, thought control, and closed system of logic (logocide). Other psychotherapeutic approaches to fundamentalism (Yao, 1987, and Moyers, 1998) examine fundamentalism in terms of the psychology of restrictive religious groups. The clinical observations of these authors reflect the pathological symptoms described by Cohen.

Clinical psychologist Marlene Winell recounts her patients’ stories in Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion (1993). Before analysing some of these descriptions in light of Cohen's devices and the broader notion of developmental arrest it is important to note that: Religious training can vary even within the same denomination or the same church. One leader may emphasize God as a fearsome judge who will someday send everyone to heaven or hell. Another may paint God more often as a heavenly father, who is merciful and generous to those who want to be saved. (115) Which one represents fundamentalism? Cohen argues that the latter portrayal of God is a partial betrayal of Bible-based Christianity and therefore not fundamentalism in a definitive sense. He argues that the overt portrayal of God as benevolent within a Bible-based dichotomous view of the world, simply enables the covert effects of the broader doctrines of sin, damnation and salvation to go unchallenged. This is essentially a fulfillment of his benign, attractive persona of the Bible device. It perpetuates the transcendent authority of the Bible such that the individual is relieved of any triangulating 173

epistemologies to process (in Cohen's words - to interrelate) the experiences of life. This in turn hinders development through the sharing of a common epistemology with non-believers.

Within the fundamentalist discourse there is recognition of what is commonly called a PK (priest's kid) or MK ( kid) syndrome. The syndrome describes the tendency for children of the most Bible-based adults to reject Bible-based authority. Winell confirms such anecdotal evidence: A report from the 1990 International Conference on Missionary Kids at Nairobi, Kenya, stated "AMK's [Adult Missionary Kids] and children of alcoholic parents have almost identical problems." (117) Clinical psychologist, Max Vogt offers similar observations in Pathological Christianity: The Dangers and Cures of Extremist Fundamentalisms (1995) comparing the fundamentalist God to the alcoholic parent.

Winell identifies common dysfunctions arising within fundamentalist families including the burden of shame, abuse of patriarchal power, stifling of independent thought, devaluation of feelings, higher purpose neglect, avoidance of responsibility, denial, and physical and sexual abuse (118-128). Vogt echoes these descriptions citing client cases describing fear, shame, depression, disempowerment, as the pathological symptoms of fundamentalism (1995). Such pathological symptoms of fundamentalism are perhaps, more specifically described as disruptions to the healthy interrelatedness (Cohen) that characterises the development of faith (Fowler).

Fundamentalism and stage crises Fowler's describes his theory of development in extremely optimistic terms. The stages represent the most benign and benevolent manifestations of development. Fowler's stages represent a progression into enlightenment. While this is a noble pursuit it does not reflect the nature of crisis that arises with new stage capacities and the potential for dysfunction. Erikson's use of crises at each stage characterises a more dichotomous approach to development. What Fowler tends to neglect is that the crises of stage transition may last a lifetime. While cognitive structures may continue to develop, their 174

application to, and conflict with the contents of previous stages may be prolonged or repressed. Fundamentalism offers quite overt remedies to Erikson's crises of development. To recall, Erikson's crises are trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs., shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, and integrity vs. despair.

In childhood as throughout later life fundamentalism encourages trust in authority of community and trust in God. The crises of shame, doubt, and guilt are resolved (arguably repressed) by the doctrine of atonement, and forgiveness. The crisis of inferiority vs. industry is resolved through the efficacy generated by the intense social involvement and commitment within fundamentalism. The fundamentalist environment creates a sense of urgency, intensity and importance that breeds industry and action. The same sense of community and purpose facilitates resolution of identity and role confusion. Protestant fundamentalisms, at least doctrinally, offer identity in Christ as children of God, working for his kingdom. The militancy of fundamentalism encourages the identity and industry found in a cause worth fighting for. Metaphors of battle and warfare are common in fundamentalist discourse - identity in the face of a common enemy. The intensity of some fundamentalisms creates an environment in which intimacy is normal. In Christian fundamentalisms, evangelical and charismatic movements are very successful in avoiding the and repression of emotion that causes isolation rather than intimacy. There exists in such movements, a fascination with the affective dimension of the inner being. Participants are encouraged to "bear their souls, share their burdens, be broken vessels before Christ". Fundamentalisms create a structure for generativity in later life. The intensity, sense of purpose, and metaphor of battle creates a dynamism in which it is difficult to stagnate. In Erikson's final stage, the fundamentalist may resolve despair with a hope of eternity, life beyond death, new beginnings, reward in the world to come having fought the good fight. The attractiveness of fundamentalisms is that they offer articulated, cohesive, and concrete answers to the crises of life.

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The pathology of fundamentalisms, as argued by Cohen, Winell, Strozier and Vogt is twofold; they intensify and articulate such crises to the point where they create that which they seek to resolve; and creedal, institutionalised, formulaic solutions tend to bypass the very problems they seek to resolve. This is because preconceived linguistic solutions to problems may allow the individual to bypass their own act of conceptualization (meaning-making) which leads to a more real and internalised resolution. The problem of fundamentalism in developmental terms, is that crises are resolved only within an exclusive provincial discourse. The provincialism and exclusivity of fundamentalisms, and the metaphor of warfare in which they are engaged, means that they will not develop into the universality of Fowler's latter stages. The question, for fundamentalism, is whether the development toward such universality is empirically demonstrable or doctrinally desirable.

While Vogt and Cohen treat fundamentalism as a pathological psychology they neglect the elements of fundamentalism that actually facilitate development at early stages. Vogt and Cohen would probably argue that the positive elements of fundamentalism are, by definition, elements not unique to it and therefore simply psychological lures into the more pathological elements that come with full immersion in the discourse. The description of fundamentalism as pathological perhaps neglects the capacity of the discourse to facilitate development of its participants into very stable stage 2 or 3 (perhaps 4) equilibriums. The developing power of fundamentalist dynamics that attain such equilbriums is also a power abused when it arrests development from such equilibriums into stages 5 and 6. In developmental terms, Cohen and Vogt would argue that the facilitating power of fundamentalism is undesirable if it facilitates a particular stage and then necessarily arrests.

Psychoapocalyptic Approaches to Fundamentalism Several authors have analysed apocalypticism as a motivation for fundamentalism. Psychiatrist, R.D. Laing (In Global Vision, 1992) suggests that

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fundamentalism is the result of an innate apocalyptic psychology that mistakenly literalises and externalises deeply symbolic apocalyptic literature. Similarly, psychohistorian Charles Strozier (1994) posits fundamentalism as a psychological response to apocalyptic mythologies. These theories may be absorbed into the developmental discourse. However, developmentalism regards apocalypticism as contents both activated by, and arresting of particular structures.

The apocalypse is a revelation concerning the ultimate purpose of the divine. In the Christian tradition apocalyptic writings are found in Ezekiel, Daniel, and most significantly - in Revelation. The apocalypse is concerned primarily with eschata or end times. In the Christian tradition the apocalypse relates: The specific forms of our forthcoming destruction, including the seven-year period of tribulation with its ferocious and unfolding violence of trumpets, seals, and vials that ends with the great battle of Armageddon between the forces of on the Plain of Jezreel near Megiddo in part of what is present- day Israel. (Strozier, 1994:154). There are many competing interpretations of the apocalypse between Christians and within fundamentalism.

Perhaps the most contested events of the apocalypse concerns the millenium of Revelation 20. In this period of 1000 years Christ is said to reign with believers. Christians in general are divided into three schools of thought concerning the millenium. Premillennialists believe that Christ's second-coming occurs before the literal 1000 years. Amillennialists believe that the reign of Christ is the now present in a symbolic 1000 years between his ascension and second-coming. Postmiliennialists believe that Christ's second coming will be ushered in by 1000 years of peace under the church. All three groups believe that the apocalypse is to be literally fulfilled.

While Strozier (1994) restricts his analysis to Christian apocalypticism it is worth noting that many fundamentalisms share dramatic eschatologies. In Islamic Shi'ism believers await the return of the last Imam as the Mahdi or messianic deliverer. The return of the Mahdi signals the beginning of an Islamic 177

government that will rule the earth. Haradi Jews exist in self-imposed exile awaiting the return of their messiah to release them from suffering. In the Japanese fundamentalism Sukyo Mahikari believers await a final eschatological ordeal known as the Baptism by Fire, after which the world will reunite under the Japanese emperor (Marty and Appleby, 1991:820). These diverse eschatologies of fundamentalism differ in their psychological effects. It is unfair to assume that the political activism or the social withdrawal of some premillennial sects may be generalised to other eschatological traditions. What is most significant to the thesis at hand is the genesis of apocalyptic scenarios reflecting mythic-literal structures of interpretation.

According to Fowler's mythic-literal description participants develop an ability to bind experiences "into meaning through the medium of stories" (1981:136). Apocalyptic writing is a form of story-telling. The characteristic of fundamentalism is that it applies such stories very literally: The richly symbolic and connotative scriptural descriptions of the Final Age are often reduced by fundamentalists to denotative blueprints of the order to come, demystified in the service of detailing the concrete plan of action required for sociopolitical ends. (Marty and Appleby, 1991:837) What Swearer (In Marty and Appleby) goes on to call the "objectification of revelation" (837), Strozier (1994:150) calls "literalized metaphor". Fowler, views such tendency as a stage characteristic of mythic-literal faith: For Stage 2 meanings are conserved and expressed in stories. There is also a sense in which the meanings are trapped in the narrative, there not being yet the readiness to draw from them conclusions about a general order of meaning in life. (1981:137) In the domain of hermeneutics developmental theory seems to provide some insight to fundamentalist apocalypticism. But, is Christian apocalypticism a factor in other domains of development?

Strozier (1994) identifies elements of apocalyticism that reflect and perpetuate the structuring characteristics of early developmental stages. The scheme of moral judgment embraced in the Christian fundamentalist apocalypse is one of punishment-reward obedience. Believers fear the punishment of the day of

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judgment while rejoicing in the rewards they will receive for their belief. Strozier's recount of interviewee's fears and expectations of the apocalypse serves to evidence this point. It is worth quoting in full: For many it is a question of emphasis [fear or reward]: the violence of tribulation during which the blood will run up to the bridles of horses or the regenerative image of Jesus descending from the clouds to a cleansed but preserved earth over which he will rule with the faithful. The difference in emphasis corresponds in large part to the class position of respondents. Sam and Monroe, both well educated, once successful, and still financially secure men, moved relatively quickly through the violence of the end times to images of hope in the millennium and in heaven. In contrast, Otto, Mary, and others dwelt on the violence of the end, and often got stuck on it. Their lives at the bottom of the social scale were full of struggle and the forces of society and history often seemed to work against their best interests. It was interesting, however, that they too, sought to embrace images of the earth's renewal. Mary beamed with excitement when she described the millennium, and Otto expected to be raptured within the decade. (74) The fundamentalist dichotomisation of believers and unbelievers, reward and punishment inspired by the apocalyptic literature is reflected in earthly terms. The effects on Fowler's developmental aspects of social-awareness, perspective-taking, are significant.

Two elements of the Christian apocalypse are relevant to these developmental concerns - separation from the world, and the nature of the Anti-Christ. The Christian fundamentalist is constantly "set apart" from "the world" in Scripture. A common theme to many apocalyptic traditions is the separation between the imperfections, injustices and sufferings of this world and the perfection and justice of the next. The believer is constantly affirmed in Scripture that they are not of this world; "living in it, but not of it". Non-believers are described as having "worldly ways". Biblical or otherwise, the distinction between this world and the next is applied to unbelievers and believers respectively. This separation has a very real psychological if not physical meaning for the believer. The physical separation of fundamentalists varies. Some choose to engage the world in order to proselytise or bring social reform from within. Their separation

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exists cognitively as a distinction between themselves and the lost they are seeking to help. Others, acquire a form of fatalist resignation to the events of the apocalypse or a desire to be set apart from worldly temptations and withdraw into their own communities. Strozier cites the Branch Davidians, and the Church Universal and Triumphant as such examples.

Developmentally, such total mental and physical withdrawal leads to a lack empathy and intimacy. In Erikson's terms: Avoidance or withdrawal ...because of a fear of the loss of self may lead to the counterpoint of intimacy-and the danger of this stage-namely a deep sense of isolation and a resulting self-absorption. Isolation or distantiation, to use a more extreme term, involves not only a withdrawal from or avoidance of intimacy. When the prospect of closeness to another or others is too threatening it may give rise to a readiness to isolate and, if necessary, to destroy those persons or forces whose essence seems dangerous to one's own. (In Fowler, 1981:80) In Fowler's terms, such withdrawal and isolation necessarily restricts expanded capacities for development including: - an augmented capacity for accuracy in taking the perspective for others and in balancing their perspectives with a newly decentrated grasp of one's own outlook...[and] - a widened, more inclusive accounting for the interests, stories and visions of others in the course of composing and maintaining one's own normative perspectives (bounds of social awareness). (1981:300) In the context of apocalypticism such development arrests.

A second feature of apocalypticism that restricts such developmental capacities is the concept of the Antichrist. The Antichrist is the concrete manifestation of the Devil appearing at the end of the age. The Antichrist is characterised as a great deceiver, bringing a message of peace to the world and working great miracles. Such characterisation is based on a collection of references including 1 John 2:18,22; 2 John 7; 2 Thess. 2:9; and 1 Tim. 4:1. The identity of the Antichrist is the subject of much speculation amongst fundamentalists. Some perceive it to be a structure, others perceive it to be an individual. Such characters and institutions as Hitler, the Pope, the Catholic Church, the united Nations, the World Bank, and the Illuminati are regularly associated with the 180

Antichrist. What is the effect of such a concept in developmental terms?

The most obvious implication, as Strozier's interviews demonstrated, is that fundamentalists are inherently suspicious of peace initiatives outside of their own churches. This suspicion has a deep psychological effect, in that it usurps the basis for common objectivity and empathy with the aims of other discourses. The ultra-fundamentalist can find no common cause outside of fundamentalism. The peaceful but deceptive nature of the Antichrist (regardless of truth value) is the ultimate block to diplomacy, compromise, empathy, or discussion between fundamentalism and other faiths. The most reasoned arguments, the most common ethical causes, the most compatible doctrines are refuted on the basis that - the Antichrist comes as an angel of light. The Antichrist concept is the penultimate cause of separation between fundamentalist perceptions and the later stages of development of Selman's social-perspective taking. Summarily, the nature of fundamentalist apocalypticism and the effects of Christian apocalypticism as a case study are congruent with early developmental structures and perpetuate the same.

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2.2.9 Developmental Approaches to Fundamentalism (Shinn, 1984)

The final section of this review is brief because its focus, Fundamentalism as a Case of Arrested Development (Shinn, In Selvidge, 1984:91-98) is a very brief paper. However, it stands as a somewhat obscure but conceptually foundational work at the intersection of developmental theory and fundamentalism.

Robert Shinn's Paper is the only direct application of developmental theory to fundamentalism known to the author of this thesis. This section is added almost as a postscript because the paper was not discovered until late in the writing of this thesis. Shinn's paper appears amongst a series of short papers constituting the book, What Makes Fundamentalism so Attractive? (Selvidge,1984). His thesis is that Christian Fundamentalism manifests at Stage 3 (Synthetic- conventional faith) of Fowler's theory. He argues that, "In a more enlightened form or phase, commonly called evangelicalism, it manifests a few of the characteristics of Stage 4" (92).

Shinn evidences his claims on Fundamentalism's cohesive orthodoxy, authoritarian influence, parochialism and fanaticism, vicarious trust in external authority, lack of symbolic distinction, anthropomorphic images of God, millennial themes, Biblical inerrancy, and tribalism. He does not elaborate on these claims, relating them rather through very brief anecdotal accounts in which he refers to "stage 3 evangelicals and charismatics...stage 3 or 4 Reformed-Calvinist conservatives...A stage 5 friend...a left-wing stage 4 biblical scholar" (95-96). Shinn notes that "Characteristics from different stages can co- exist in any stage" (92) while maintaining that "Stage 3 is the plateau on which most people live out their lives" (94).

While Shinn's article is titled, Fundamentalism as a Case of Arrested Development, he does not explicitly address the actual mechanisms of this 182

arrest. Rather, he briefly describes the correlation between Stage 3 and Protestant Fundamentalism. As a whole, the article offers a succinct introduction to the basic concept of linkage between Fowler's developmental theory and the notion of fundamentalism.

This thesis concurs with Shinn's basic premise, that Fundamentalism bears an uncanny resemblance to certain developmental structures. The task of this thesis is to examine the initial resemblance in sufficient detail to determine its fit. I do not feel committed to find such a fit and indeed there are some significant questions raised for the popular scope of fundamentalism in light of the analysis herein. This thesis seeks to broaden both the developmental base and the religious scope of fundamentalism utilised by Shinn. The actual mechanisms of arrest are also addressed in detail.

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2.2.10 Conclusion

The approaches to fundamentalism discussed in this section have revealed the descriptive power of the developmental discourse while highlighting some gaps in understanding that exist in its modern form. The developmental discourse can accommodate the insights of historical, psychological, hermeneutic, and sociological approaches to fundamentalism.

The following application of Fowler’s Aspects of Faith to fundamentalism draws on the developmental tradition, its concepts, dimensions, and dynamics as analysed and contextualised by the study thus far. It is an interpretative application of seven aspects that group many traditional domains of development to encompass the phenomenon of faith. As discussed in Part One of this chapter, faith is an appropriate metaphor to encompass the phenomenon of religious fundamentalism.

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2.3 Fowler’s Aspects of Faith and Fundamentalism

2.3.1 Introduction

Choosing Analytical Discourses

There are many paradigmatic lenses through which fundamentalism and liberalism might be viewed and interpreted. Structural developmental psychology is but one such lens. I choose it because I believe in its ability to focus with relative clarity the core issues of the fundamentalist-liberal continuum. It is a balanced discourse between extreme nativism and behaviourism, genetic determinism and social constructivism, absolutism and relativism. A balanced approach is no guarantee of credibility but it does negate a certain amount of human prejudice born of affiliation with an exclusive extreme.

It is important to acknowledge some of the discourses that could have been used to explain these phenomena. To acknowledge these discourses before departing from them is not to negate their value but to locate their collective insights in a single discourse - the structural developmental discourse.

This said, fundamentalism and liberalism might be examined as mega-memes, selfishly competing to survive in a world of ideas red in tooth and nail. They might be examined as attributions serving more base human needs, or perhaps as competing discourses of power - empowering and disempowering their participants. They might be examined as elaborate yet eclectic and circumstantial webs woven for the ends of cognitive consistency, or semantically as nothing more or less than the illusions and realities of worlds of words with no more definitive reference than the speaker of the same. They

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might be examined as worldviews - the sum of enculturated contents and cognitive dynamics, or as historically traceable movements - the random products of real time and space convergence. They might be examined as the manifestations of predictable and perennial social facts, or as manifestations of a more primal struggle between id, ego, and superego - more to do with deeply rooted sexual desire than religious truth. Then, most commonly, they might be examined from within as manifestations of the struggle between a literal Devil deceiving a fallen humanity from the true knowledge of a biblically revealed God.

The Structural Developmental Approach

Developmentalists, Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, Oser and Gmünder and James Fowler offer more specific descriptions of stage development. It is from their theories that the stage-structure descriptions applied in the review were drawn. What follows is a more focussed analysis of fundamentalism using Fowler's seven aspects of faith.

Using Fowler's Aspects as a tool for an analysis of fundamentalism is clearly a qualitative exercise. There is a temptation to attempt to define too precisely the structures of application. To do so is to fail to appreciate the structural developmental discourse worked within - it is to problematise abstract concepts with a concrete definition. The language of Aspects is descriptive. Only the existence of stages and their progression is assumed to be prescriptive. Perhaps clearer understanding of the mechanics of cognitive structuring will be provided through future developments in neurological studies. For now, this discussion takes place within the boundaries of the language of the age and the developmetal discourse, accepting that vision and application are always limited to a degree. This said, the abstract aspects to be applied herein give more clarity to an understanding of fundamentalism.

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2.3.2 Fundamentalism and Form of Logic

Form of Logic is the parent aspect to all other aspects of faith in that it describes the primary structures of cognition from which other aspects derive. According to research pioneered by Jean Piaget, a form of logic describes the emergence of structurally different ways of perceiving concepts of time, space, causality and quantity. Given these concerns in the context of cognition, Piaget is often described as a genetic epistemologist. He proposed that development leads to increasing differentiation and thus conformity with reality. It is contended herein, that fundamentalism is a domain specific religious expression of the structural dynamics of early forms of logic.

Piaget identified four periods of cognitive development; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. He referred to sub-periods as stages (Miller, 1993: 42). It would seem logical, if stages of logic are universal and social transmission is a developmental factor, that the social structures of religion must affect and be affected by such forms. The question is, whether a stage of logical reasoning can give rise to a socially identifiable form of religion. A second question is whether traces of early religious logic are protected from later structural scrutiny thus arresting development in a particular domain. If such dynamics did occur, they would no doubt affect discourses other than religion. Politics, economics, ethnicity, sexuality, and science are but a few such discourses likely to share fundamentalist expressions. The label, fundamentalist, once applied to a specific Protestant movement is now applied to a variety of discourses, even naturalism itself (Glynn, 1997). However, these discourses are not of immediate concern. Of immediate concern is how existing descriptions of religious fundamentalism reflect the structural characteristics of forms of logic.

The preoperational period is characterised by the emergence of semiotic

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function, egocentrism, rigidity of thought, and semilogical reasoning (Miller, 1993:53-56). What follows is a cursory application of such structuring tendencies to religious fundamentalism.

Semiotic Function

Semiotic function (what Fowler calls symbolic function) is simply the, "ability to use one object or event to stand for another" (Miller, 1993:51). As development occurs there is an increasing ability to represent mental events and objects symbolically. While this ability is a characteristic of preoperational development it is not until later stages that, signs and symbols can be carefully differentiated from the objects and events they represent: This notion that words or other signs are arbitrarily assigned to objects is not easy for a child to grasp. Young children think that an object's name is as intrinsic to the object as are its colour and form. When asked why spaghetti is called spaghetti, a young child may say that it looks like spaghetti and feels like spaghetti and tastes like spaghetti, so we call it spaghetti! (Miller, 52) Are there any characteristics of a fundamentalist community of faith that reflect or create conditions for the operation of such a principle of semiotic function?

Fundamentalist communities (like any close knit communities) are characterised by a centralised and identifying discourse. This discourse is most identifiably expressed in religious language - rhetoric, slogan, and cliché. The uniqueness of the fundamentalist discourse is its isolationist claims to absolute truth in the realm of the metaphysical. One may consider the creeds and canons of fundamentalist community as the linguistic signs and signifiers of this metaphysical reality. The developmental concern in such a cohesive and often epistemologically isolated community is twofold; firstly, there is an inevitable divorce between creed, ritual, and tradition as the signs, and contextually understood reality as the signified; and secondly, there is a preoperational inability to separate sign and signified in the children of the community. Children are actively encouraged to use the signs of the discourse long before they have the semiotic ability to recognise the arbitrary relationship between the sign and the signified. This is inevitable; what is developmentally arresting is 188

the failure to address the relationship between the two at later ages. Examining or questioning the relationship between the two before indoctrination is complete may lead to doubt. It is through questioning that the cohesion of community may be weakened. Hence the reinforcement of obedience, conformity and blind faith, and the demonisation of doubt characterise fundamentalist communities. This notion will be explore further under the Aspect - Symbolic Function.

Egocentrism The egocentrism of the preoperational form of logic is not to be understood in terms of selfishness with its negative connotation. Rather it is: (a) the incomplete differentiation of the self and the world, including other people, and (b) the tendency to perceive, understand and interpret the world in terms of the self. One implication is that the child cannot take another person's perceptual or conceptual perspective. (Miller, 53) Egocentrism is a central factor in Fowler's Aspects of Social Perspective Taking and Social Awareness.

In a fundamentalist community where shared discourse is of paramount importance self perception is made synonymous with community perception. The tools of perception are received within community, rather than constructed from experience. There is no clear demarcation between the two (receiving and constructing) but it is a qualitative distinction assumed by developmentalism nonetheless. The developing ability to construct autonomous perceptions through encounter with the other is restricted by the isolationism and doctrinal prejudices of fundamentalist community. In Protestant fundamentalism such egocentric isolationism is rationalised through a literal (and arguably acontextual) application of such Scriptures as: (2 John 10-11) If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work. (Rom 16:17) I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them.

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(2 Thes 3:6) In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. (2 Thes 3:14) If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. (2 Cor 6:14) Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? This division between believers and unbelievers is also central theme of the Koran. (5.51) O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people. (9.29) Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection. (9.30) And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away! (47.8-12) And (as for) those who disbelieve, for them is destruction and He has made their deeds ineffective. That is because they hated what Allah revealed, so He rendered their deeds null. Have they not then journeyed in the land and seen how was the end of those before them: Allah brought down destruction upon them, and the unbelievers shall have the like of it. That is because Allah is the Protector of those who believe, and because the unbelievers shall have no protector for them. Surely Allah will make those who believe and do good enter gardens beneath which rivers flow; and those who disbelieve enjoy themselves and eat as the beasts eat, and the fire is their abode. Group and individual identification in fundamentalism is a measure of belief. The popular concept of belief and unbelief in fundamentalism is one of professed creed rather than ethical action. There is an assumption that the act follows rather than precedes the profession of belief. One who lives the same but does not profess the same is not a true believer. Indeed, according to 190

Protestant fundamentalism, to say that work and belief are reciprocally exchangeable is tantamount to the heresy of salvation by works.

Summarily, the doctrinally embedded distinction at the level of language (the sign) between believers and unbelievers reinforces egocentric perspectives because it does not encourage the believer to look for synonymy beyond the linguistic particularities of belief.

The rigidity of thought that characterises the preoperational period is perhaps best described using the concepts of centration, state focus, appearance focus, and reversibility. What are these preoperational characteristics and how are they affected by and affecting of, fundamentalism?

Centration is the tendency to focus on a single feature of an object or event while ignoring other potentially important features. Fundamentalisms are often characterised by a form of scriptural centration. All other theoretical possibilities for the cause of an event are unconsidered in the context of a scriptural worldview. A child brought up in a fundamentalist community learns quickly to attribute a divine sense of authority to a canonised text. Scripture is a powerful locus of authority. If this sense of authority is instilled during a preoperational period of development, it is likely that the authority will remain largely immune from the later effects of decentration. Decentration is the tendency to diversify and re-integrate epistemological sources.

There is perhaps a connection here to Marty's characterisation of fundamentalism as a reaction to modernity. Modernity and science offer new attributions for old events, experiences, and occurrences. Learned centration is threatened by new explanations especially in the stages before new interpretations can be used to protect the discourse of centration. Historical fundamentalism has reacted (often violently) against many new explanations threatening centrated traditional understandings. Heliocentric and round-earth , evolution, old earth geology, expanding universe theory, pathological bases for neuroses, and more recently genetic predisposition to

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homosexuality, have all received violent reactions from fundamentalists of their respective eras. They each represent an approach to phenomena that decentrates and thus threatens, the fundamentalist worldview.

State focus refers to the tendency to focus on the before and after states of an event while ignoring the transforming process that, if observed, may affect the perception of the final state. Similarly, appearance focus is the tendency to focus on immediate sensory appearance rather than reality. There is an inability to detect distortion, illusion, and deception by triangulating appearance with rational process. A preoperational child may believe that a stick actually bends as it is placed in water and distorted by the refraction of light (Miller, 1993:54). The appeal of much magic relies on this deception of perception. What prolonged influence do such mental behaviours have in later life? What perceptions in adulthood remain unchecked by the triangulation of process?

To provide one example, state and appearance focus is apparent in the fundamentalist dichotomy between the believer and the unbeliever on either side of conversion. This is definitely not to contend that conversion is an invalid transformation or that it is an illusory phenomenon. Nor is it to contend that the labels of believer and unbeliever cannot denote a significant and deep-seated difference. However, it is to contend that there are elements in fundamentalism that have encouraged a popular understanding of conversion that is state based and illusory due to its neglect of the conversion process. This is the sort of conversion wherein salvation is perceived as an immediately attainable state rather than a process. Such salvation is not worked out "with fear and trembling," it is attained with immediacy. It is both instantaneous and formulaic. It is a salvation accepted on appearance of a profession of faith. It is the sort of conversion valued from a person at the end of the sword, the top of the fire, or the end of a line of converted others. Such state observed conversion is evident in many Pentecostal fundamentalist movements.

James Barr, author of Fundamentalism observes the connection between Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism:

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The doctrine of most Pentecostal groups seems to be uncompromisingly fundamentalist, and in this sense probably more extreme than the mainstream type of conservative evangelicalism taken as typical in this book. (1981:207-8) The , as an umbrella movement to Pentecostalism is characterised by its emphasis on and emotion. In both cases such experience and emotion are seen to be responses to the Spirit. The work of the Spirit is responsible for the process of conversion. The discourse of the Spirit is esoteric. It is explicitly unobservable. It is described esoterically within the Pentecostal discourse as a Spirit of Power, a Holy Wind, the fire of the , the unquenchable fire, the outpouring of the new wine. Pentecostals claim to be born in the Spirit. Many claim to have had the experience of being slain in the Spirit, healed by the Spirit, convicted by the Spirit, touched by the Spirit. These understandings of the Spirit are strongly associated with the Spirit of the New Testament discourse.

Conversion is often reduced to believing in Christ, however the fundamentalist rarely questions what belief in Christ means. Usually an agreeable articulation of the same (I believe in Jesus) serves as confirmation of salvation. The articulation of these words can be the result of so many different things, so many diverse experiences, and so many different meanings that the literal language has become, in the words of Solskice - dead metaphor. Purely literal understanding of language prizes the language above the meaning. In such instances belief in Christ is reduced to a historical acknowledgement of his existence in space and time. The understanding of concepts beneath this belief (vicarious suffering and atonement, the divinity of Christ, Original Sin) are beyond the cognitive grasp of many fully developed adults let alone children who profess a belief in Jesus.

Fundamentalism assumes that professions of faith in Christ point always to the same meaningful and cohesive body of underlying understanding, if indeed it understands the presence of the paradigmatic iceberg below a single linguistic tip at all.

It is always more impressed by the articulation of a belief than by the living 193

expression of belief without its articulation. Again, there is reason for this found in the contents of fundamentalist belief. The fundamentalist is adamant that good works are no means to salvation. Good intention, Christ-like behaviour, nor the mere reality of having been created by God, serve to affect the outcome of one's salvation. Salvation by works would negate the doctrine of vicarious suffering and atonement. Good works in secular contexts are often demonised by fundamentalists as works of the Devil, come as an Angel of Light. The articulated belief in Christ is all that separates the Christian from the non- Christian, the saved from the unsaved. There is no tangible, experiential, existential, or physical way of distinguishing between the saved and the unsaved except that one says the words I believe in Christ. The additional qualification and believes in one's heart... is immeasurable and indicative of qualities found in those who do not believe with their lips.

The fundamentalist's normalisation of instantaneous conversion is a manifestation of this understanding of belief. Mass crusade conversions, and alter-calls are features of the fundamentalist discourse. The familiar rhetoric of such occasions cements the notion of instantaneous conversion wherein one is converted from being hell-bound to heaven-bound in an instant. The answer to the question "how do I become a Christian?" is,"pray the sinner's prayer and believe in Jesus". There is a certainty that the transition from the asking of the question to the enactment of the answer is something that changes eternal destiny in an instant. This is the reasoning behind the practice of deathbed conversions. It is affirmed in the fundamentalist mindset by the salvation of the sinner on the cross beside Christ.

James Fowler describes the fundamentalist conversion experience as a "conversional change that blocks or helps one avoid the of faith stage changes" (1981:286). In a broader context fundamentalism provides "cast-iron images of identity and faith" while the convert "remains in that stage for life" (Fowler: 286). Fundamentalism deliberately halts development because it finds truth primarily in content rather than in process or the interaction (accommodation and assimilation) between the two.

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As a practice in context, instantaneous conversion reveals again the preeminence of the articulated word in the fundamentalist worldview. Psychologist Marlene Winell, author of Leaving the Fold quotes from a letter of one of her clients on this point: I also saw how deeply destructive the Evangelical mentality had been to me, not only as I applied it myself, but as it was applied to me as a potential convert. Once someone recites the formula "I accept Jesus as my personal Saviour" they have become what they should be and the rest is hardly important ... Overall the person becomes an object, a thing to be manipulated into the proper configuration. (1993:204) In fundamentalism one may change in an instant one's eternal destiny with a change in the language of one's belief in Christ. The articulations I don't believe and I believe are literally - worlds apart. They are commiserated or celebrated respectively as the infallible expressions of being. As such, being is reduced to the literal word.

The interchangability of faith and belief in fundamentalism is a result of such reductionism. Faith is reduced to belief because there is no other way of separating the faith of Christians from the faith of non-Christians. Alan Watts, a writer on eastern and western notes somewhat poetically: Faith is an openness and trusting attitude to truth and reality, whatever it may turn out to be. This is a risky and adventurous state of mind. Belief, in the religious sense, is the opposite of faith-because it is a fervent wishing or hope, a compulsive clinging to the idea that the universe is arranged and governed in such and such a way. Belief is holding to a rock; faith is learning how to swim- and this whole universe swims in boundless space. (In Babinski, 1995:29) This distinction was expressed in detail in earlier in this thesis. It is a distinction central to the developmental approach to religion and the language of conversion and one Babinski himself says he has grown to recognise (29).

The parallel between the Pentecostal perception of conversion and the state focus and process neglect of early development is twofold; firstly, the immediacy of conversion and its measurement primarily by the states of

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speaking in tongues and physical submission to the Spirit is appearance focussed; secondly, process scrutiny is placed beyond the limitations of human scrutiny when it is placed in the realm of an enigmatic Spirit such that it becomes an untouchable attribution. Indeed the discourse of Protestant fundamentalism often protects its own assumptions from internal scrutiny by usurping the legitimacy of rational human perception at such times. The questioner may be told that "God's ways are higher than man's" or warned, "lean not on your own understanding" - Scripture is the filter for science and not vice-versa. Such statements serve to circumvent the scrutiny of the conversion process such that the appearances either side of conversion are protected. This dichotomy between the hell-destined and heaven-destined states of the individual either side of an immediate conversion understandably reinforces an evangelical zeal characteristic of many fundamentalisms.

The final aspect of rigidity of thought, reversibility, refers to the mental ability to reverse the steps of a process or series. The preoperational child lacks reversibility. While the operational teenager or adult may well have the ability of reversibility, like all other developmental aspects its application may vary. It has been contended throughout this paper that fundamentalism is affected by and affecting of development. Lack of reversibility may be compartmentalised by particular discourses in which the individual engages. Religious fundamentalism is one such discourse. One of the significant characteristics of conversion from fundamentalism is an increasing application of reversibility to the individual's fundamentalism. Winell's (1993) and Babinski's (1995) accounts of former fundamentalists frequently describe deconvert's new sense of introspection, a self-criticism enabled by the perception of self from the perspective of others. At this stage the arguments and apologetics that kept the other at a distance are turned on one's own belief system. The rigour once applied to other's assumptions is newly applied to one's own assumptions. The locus of authority, be it Scripture or interpreter, is challenged by reversibility because the very act of reversing implies that there is an epistemological standard (rationalism?) beyond the traditional standards held up to scrutiny.

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Semilogical Reasoning refers to the preoperational tendency to relate thoughts loosely rather than logically. This is obviously a recurring tendency, regardless of age. However, in children especially there is a tendency to anthropomorphise cause and effect relationships - natural events are explained in terms of human or divine behaviours. Piaget described this stage as artificialism (1973: Ch 11). The child moves from egocentric explanations of phenomena (realism) to animistic explanations (animism), human explanations, divine explanations (artificialism), and finally mechanistic explanations (atomism). Development from semilogical to logical reasoning reflects this continuum.

Religious fundamentalism is characterised by divine artificialism. In some ways fundamentalism's suspicion of naturalism may reflect a stage conflict. The divine locus of authority, and the powerful sense of divinely orchestrated cause and effect is challenged by the new insights of atomism. Fundamentalism may retreat into, or redefine, its artificialism through encounter with atomistic structures.

The Protestant fundamentalist embrace of artificialism is evidenced by concern with the miraculous in everyday life, supplicational prayer, sharing times during church services for what the Lord has done in my life this week, and divine attributions for current events. The latter was evidenced recently by prominent fundamentalist Jerry Falwell's highly publicised comments regarding the causes of September 11th attacks: What we saw on Tuesday could be miniscule if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make an alternative lifestyle...all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this to happen". (In Van de Weyer, 2001:95) The divine mandate claimed by Taliban spokesmen as justification for the attacks provides evidence of fundamentalist artificialism from a different religious tradition.

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Artificial (in the Piagetian sense) interpretations of current events form a significant body of Protestant fundamentalist literature. Divine artificialism coupled with the psychology of fundamentalist eschatology has produced and popularised fundamentalist classics such as Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) and David Wilkerson's Set the Trumpet to thy Mouth (1985). Charles Strozier, author of Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America, notes the literal apocalyptic nature of fundamentalism: The apocalyptic energizes contemporary fundamentalism, which in it its many garbs has become a familiar global happening. It is not at all clear how one should properly define "fundamentalism," but all students of the subject, from Selma to Tehran, have noted that fundamentalism has a decidedly apocalyptic character. (1994:2) Such literal apocalypticism is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of Piaget's divine artificialism. Author, Grace Halsell (1987) explores the very real political ramifications of fundamentalist apocalypticism under the Regan and Bush administration in Prophecy and politics: militant evangelists on the road to nuclear war. Halsell's expose provides a clear link between the psychology of apocalypticism and its social effects.

These characteristics of Piaget's form of logic relate to all other Aspects of development. The following Aspects extend Piaget's characteristic structures into areas more immediately identifiable with the social discourse of fundamentalism. It is important to remember that each Aspect is itself a representation, a sign, of structures of development infinitely more complex and dynamic in reality than the language used to express them.

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2.3.3 Fundamentalism and Locus of Authority

Locus of authority is essentially an epistemological issue. What sources of knowledge are valued? What ways of knowing are dominant? In Fowler's own words a locus of authority inspires the questions: To whom or what does a person look for validation or legitimation of his or her most significant felt meanings? How is that "locus" constituted? How is it justified? (In Dykstra & Parks eds., 1986:36) The dominant source of authoritative knowledge affects both the content of valued knowledge and the processes by which content structures, and is structured, in the developmental model.

Early developmental stages attribute authority and hence, authoritative knowledge, to sources upon which it is dependent for other immediate basic needs. The locus of authority in early stages is extrinsic. In childhood, such authority is inevitably located in parents and immediate adults such as teachers. Fowler terms the participants in this stage incumbents of authority roles. In early formal operations, the locus of authority shifts to the consensus of valued groups. It is possible that the crisis of transition between these early stages is reflected in the manifest tension between parental and peer influences during adolescence.

As noted previously, Piaget identified four stages of a child's conception of the world; realism, animism, artificialism, and atomism (1973). During the stage of artificialism the child attributes all things to the purposes of humans (human artificialism) and later, in some cases to God (divine artificialism). In both cases, authority is located in external others. Valued knowledge is received and accepted from the most immediately powerful others. This externalised locus of authority, found on the fulfilment of egocentric needs, may be contrasted with the intrinsic locus of authority at later stages.

In later stages of development authority is located more within internalised experience - intrinsic authority. The external authorities that dictate the

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knowledge of youth become subject to the authority of individual experience and eventually of cumulative human wisdom.

The fundamentalist locus of authority is essentially and primarily external and received. Authority is located outside of the self in Scripture and its canonised interpreters. The Christian Bible and the Muslim Koran share the claim to be the definitive Words of God. The Vedas and Upanishads of and the Tripitaka of Buddhism play less of an authoritative role in their respective fundamentalisms, perhaps due to a lesser emphasis historically on canonisation. This is not to say that scriptural interpretation has not been an issue of authority in these fundamentalisms.

In Protestant Christian and Sunni Islamic fundamentalism Scripture is a locus of authority perceived to record the very words of God. However, words are necessarily, read, understood, and applied. Out of this necessity, authority is invested in interpreters of The Word. In the case of Protestant fundamentalism the words of particular preachers or evangelists become almost as authoritative as Scripture. In Catholic fundamentalism the interpretive locus of authority may be attributed to the Pope as bearer of the authority of apostolic succession. The externalised locus of authority is observed in the priest, pastor, minister or televangelist of Protestantism; the imam, ayatollah, ulama, faqih, or marja'al- taqlid of Shi'ism; the , mufti, or alim of Sunnism; the guru of Hinduism; the bodhisattva of Mayhayana Buddhism; or the arahat of Buddhism. In each case the external authority is made congruous with the divine or the ultimate to the point that other epistemologies are subordinated.

An external locus of authority is an ontogenetic necessity. Children cannot derive authority from experiences that they have not had. External authority limits very real dangers faced by children before they are able to comprehend, internalise, and abstract the reasoning behind a command. Yet for creative interactionism to occur experience must eventually be allowed to inform a rational understanding of external authority; it is in this way that external authority may develop to be communicated and made relevant in new

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environments. When an external locus of authority perpetuates its own existence divorced from an understanding of that which perhaps it initially sought to protect, it becomes a dead metaphor, a symbol without the symbolised - an idol. Fundamentalism tends to perpetuate external loci of authority by subordinating empirical and rational knowledge with the knowledge of revelation and the authority of divine mandate.

Fundamentalism may be characterised by its maintenance of external authority and its suspicion of experiential or human epistemologies. The fundamentalist is suspicious of subjective knowledge, knowledge from experience, or intuitive gnosis because the self is not to be trusted. In Christian fundamentalism the self is innately flawed and inherently blind - the legacy of the Original Sin. In such fundamentalist theology true knowledge begins with the fear of God. The denial of self, the fear of intellectual deception, and a distinctive distrust of secular science tend to reinforce the power of extrinsic authority within the community of faith. It is a psychological principle of fundamentalism that the individual capacity for critical thought is surrendered to a single higher authority said to be the best interpreter of the Ultimate authority.

The distinctive fatalism of both Protestant and Islamic fundamentalism evidence such a surrender of dynamic critical perception. Their respective cliches, "thy will be done", "The Lord works in mysterious ways", "God's ways are higher than man's" and "if Allah wills it" are spoken most often when experience seems incongruous with religious expectation. They represent the relegation of intrinsic dissonance by resignation to a higher authority. To entertain such dissonance would be to value the intrinsic (self) over the external (God) and thus to succumb to human pride - the of self.

These observations concerning the locus of fundamentalist authority cannot be divorced from the contents of fundamentalisms. These contents are discussed extensively by the socio-historical researchers of fundamentalism such as Marty and Appleby (1991), Marsden (1991), and Armstrong (2000). It is suffice to say here that the common apocalyptic themes, fear of post-death retribution, and

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grand narratives of fundamentalisms reflect and create the extremes of its state and structure of mind. Content and structure in fundamentalism collectively deny personal or intrinsic, intuitive knowledge; distrust human wisdom and human experience; and accordingly arrest development into the intrinsic epistemologies that Fowler describes as later stages of the Aspect of faith - Locus of Authority.

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2.3.4 Fundamentalism and Social Awareness and Perspective Taking

While all Aspects of faith are codependent it is particularly difficult to separate Social Awareness from Perspective Taking. Perspective taking or role taking refers to the ability to perceive the world, to perceive others perceiving the world, and to perceive being perceived by others. Fowler's work in this area draws heavily on Robert Selman's stage theory of perspective-taking. Psychosocial development entails an increasing ability to abstract perception and stand outside of oneself.

Fowler's associate Robert Selman associates perspective taking abilities with developmental structures. He postulates three steps in social perspective taking: simple perspective taking, interpersonal perspective taking, and mutual- interpersonal perspective taking (In Fowler, 1981:72-773). Fowler describes these using personal applications. He describes the three stages respectively as, "I see you seeing a third object", "I see you seeing me", "I see you seeing me; I see you seeing me seeing you" (72,73). In essence Fowler and Selman are arguing that developmental progression enables more objective understandings of self through the recognition of others.

Social Awareness as an aspect of faith, refers to the principles of inclusion and exclusion by which an individual engages or disengages other individuals according to their social group. It is an issue of self-identification. In Fowler's terms, social awareness: Focusses on the extent of inclusiveness and accuracy of construal of the reference groups in relation to which persons ground their identity and define their moral responsibility. (In Dykstra & Parks, 1986: 36) Developmentally, this sense of social awareness moves from the local to the universal.

Fundamentalism actively discredits the value and integrity of other perspectives and socio-religious groups. There is no unity in diversity, one beyond the many 203

for a fundamentalist. In fact, fundamentalists see themselves as the only One of the many as evidenced by the title of Reconstructionist apologist, Rousas Rushdoony's The One and the Many (1971). As such, the same mechanisms of fundamentalism that restrict developed perspective taking tend to affect social awareness. The application of such social awareness and perspective taking to fundamentalism and stages beyond, is in their respective willingness to first observe and then appreciate the position of others. It is a contention of this thesis that fundamentalism arrests development of perspective taking.

Fundamentalists believe that all other beliefs (perspectives) are wrong. Whether their fault is in emphasis, morality, or theology is immaterial, for any default from the one true faith that so many different fundamentalist churches claim, has the same inevitable and terrible consequence - eternal damnation. Fundamentalism implicitly discourages advanced perspective taking because it may lead to empathy, and empathy leads to appreciation, appreciation leads to doubt, and doubt is the mark of a weak faith. It is the weakness of Job, Peter and Thomas. Fundamentalism's demonisation and censorship of other perspectives, its isolationism, ironically weakens the understanding of its own tenets of faith. A creed understood in isolation is perhaps not appreciated or embraced as much as a creed deliberately formed through critical reflection of other's creeds.

Winell (1993), Babinski (1995) and Edlin (1999) note that such censored perspective taking often has an adverse affect if the fundamentalist is exposed to new perspectives later in life. The precocious identity formed and protected in youth has difficulty surviving the exposure to new perspectives that early adulthood may bring. Many fundamentalist churches and schools have bridging courses to counter the increased exposure to new perspectives encountered at secular .

The apologetics course for school leavers known as Mind Wars (1996) is one such example. The title page of the course booklet includes the question: "Will you survive?" and the answer, "Only if you are prepared". The course is

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marketed as a "university survival course".

Such intensive courses (delivered over a weekend) lend themselves to the "banking education" rejected by Paulo Friere. Without the complementary process of learning content through experience such teaching has a tendency toward precocious identity formation. The individual is immersed with content without time or objective context to process it. This content is prematurely internalised and manifests itself superficially as rhetorical rebuttals of other's perspectives. This has the effect of arresting the need for depthful interaction of perspectives that leads to developed perspective taking.

Throughout early developmental stages (I & II) identification is with immediate others - usually family. In these early years children construct especially powerful images of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and religion. These categories are by no means mutually exclusive. A child's physical need to belong and the accompanying egoism involves identification with the most significant others. This is perhaps a survival response of all infant life. The competitiveness that child egoism inevitably provokes may later manifest in sibling rivalry, gender rivalry, racial rivalry or religious rivalry. Increasing contact with others may increase the bounds of social awareness unless a learned fear of difference dominates the encounter. Usually learned fears of difference will prevent an encounter from taking place inasmuch as social segregation perpetuates the fear of otherness and thus encounter with it. The developmental concern is the equilibration or balance of power between the actual experiences the young have and the precocious discourses through which they interpret such experiences. The provincial awareness that characterises fundamentalism is indicative of such stage structures.

In later stages of development (V & VI) social awareness "extends beyond class norms and interests" eventually leading to "identification with the species [and a] transnarcissistic love of being" (Fowler, 1981:245). At these stages one finds an identification with a common humanity that accepts even those who reject this same notion. There exists a distinctive sense of the one beyond the many

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that unites rather than divides, and includes rather than segregates. At such stages, social labels apply only to describe specific aspects of difference, rather than holistic being.

Fundamentalisms as total ideologies cannot afford to admit the integrity of other perspectives. Perspective taking promotes empathy and empathy with others does little to protect the absolutism of one's own beliefs. Distance allows differences to exist in a void of empathy. Fundamentalism thus reflects the social awareness and perspective taking of early stages of development. Moreover, it tends to perpetuate such stages through the structuring power of contents utilising metaphors of difference and alienation from collective humanity.

In the discourse of Protestant fundamentalism these differentiating metaphors appear as, the sheep and the goats, the lost and the found, the saved and the unsaved, the elect and the fallen. The notions of true prophets and false prophets, true teachers and false teachers, deceivers, false angels of light, and wolves in sheep's clothing, create a climate of suspicion in Protestant fundamentalism. In a structure where absolute truth is paramount and problems of interpretation rarely legitimated, dissent attributed to spiritual deception and demonisation of the other is commonplace. This demonisation (almost literally) of difference is a powerful deterrent to those whose doubts might otherwise cause them to leave the fold. Social awareness is dictated by a prejudicial discourse. The demonisation of difference over jot or tittle prohibits a natural synthesis of awareness through social encounter. Thus, fundamentalism tends to concentrate on difference rather than commonality. In all guises fundamentalisms tend to be hostile to ecumenical movements. Some branches of Protestant fundamentalism expect the Antichrist to be the leader of a World Church. Indeed, it is not an uncommon contention in Protestant fundamentalist literature that the Catholic Pope is the Antichrist of Revelation.

Ecumenicism or synthesis is often seen as heretical compromise, a watering down of faith - an unequal yoking. The consequences of heresy and

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deconversion in all fundamentalisms are extreme. Immediate ex- communication and social ostracism are the least of such consequences. The bounds of social awareness in fundamentalism are patrolled by such indoctrinated fears of other.

The concept of otherworldliness is yet another structuring content of Protestant fundamentalism that limits the bounds of social awareness. Protestant fundamentalists see themselves as strangers in the world and in the world but not of the world. The world is inherently evil and fallen. There is a sense in Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu fundamentalism in which truth is to be found in transcendence and detachment from the world. In Hinduism moksa describes release from the life-cycle of samsara. In Buddhism, nirvana describes the ultimate state of release from the principal suffering characteristic of human life. Taken literally, this sense of otherworldliness has seen in extreme cases the establishment of separatist fundamentalist communities seeking independence from the political, social, cultural, and economic systems of an inherently evil world. Younger generations raised in physical or religious isolation are inevitably likely to accept the reality with which they are first presented. The reality of many fundamentalisms is one of fear - a fear of otherness. It is a fear that is rarely tested in social isolation. Such isolation stunts psychosocial development - even development into a conscious embrace of the very truths fundamentalism seeks to protect.

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2.3.5 Fundamentalism and World Coherence

The Aspect, World Coherence refers to relationships between the various discourses encountered and held at any given stage. The relationships between discourses (Fowler calls these genres) develop from episodic fragmented and tacitly held relationships of early stages (I, II & III) to more explicit and unitive systems in later stages (IV, V & VI). In Fowler's words, World Coherence, "represents a focus on each stage's particular way of composing and holding a comprehensive sense of unified meanings (In Dykstra & Parks, 1986:37). World Coherence naturally moves from the concrete to the abstract over time as new connections, patterns, and categories are imposed on existing contents and experiences. There are two interesting dynamics in fundamentalism's sense of world coherence. The first is its tendency to accelerate development until stage four; the second is its tendency to arrest development into stages five and six.

Fundamentalists of all faiths are plied with all-encompassing meta-narratives from an early age. Children in fundamentalist communities of faith are overtly exposed to ultimate contents of faith. There exists an educational immediacy driven by a fear of contamination from other sources and the saving power of true knowledge. It is a fear fuelled by belief in a young age of accountability that ultimately determines the course of eternal life. Fundamentalisms identified by a rejection of secular modernity recognise the importance of separatist education for the protection of their worldview. Independent Christian fundamentalist schools are distinctive in their overt teaching of a cohesive Bible- centred worldview. The Dayanand Anglo-Vedic schools of Hinduism, the home- schooling of Muslim dakwah children in Malaysia, the Agudist schools that feed students into the in Jewish Israel are all examples of the necessary separatism of fundamentalist education. The distinctive of such schools is primarily the meta-narrative of their religious worldview, and the perception that they exist in spite of a surrounding and hostile secular environment.

A meta-narrative is an all-encompassing story. It is a cosmology of the

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universe, an assessment of the human condition and purpose, an explanation of history, and a vision of the future. The meta-narrative is at the top of a hierarchy of subordinate contents where contents represent the minutiae of life and experience. The meta-narrative is the plot dictating all details of the story. The highest level of the Protestant fundamentalist meta-narrative affirms a triune God of all creation, a fallen humanity, and an atoning Christ who will return to judge the living and the dead for an eternity in heaven or hell. The highest level of the Jewish Orthodox meta-narrative affirms a single God seeking to bring redemption to a disobedient world through His chosen race (the Jews). His penultimate act will be to send a Messiah to liberate His people from oppression. The highest level of the Muslim meta-narrative is summed up by the shahadah, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger". The meta-narrative is often expressed through a profession of faith (the shahadah) or a creed (The Apostle's Creed).

The meta-narrative, with all its implications, is intended to permeate all aspects of life. In the context of education and schooling it permeates, even dominates, curriculum. It is this distinctive of fundamentalism that accelerates the development of a coherent worldview. From a young age fundamentalist children are taught to make apparent causal connections between the meta- narrative and life experience. Fundamentalists are often characterised by the concreteness, the absoluteness, and the internal coherence of their worldview. With the assumption of coherence comes a supreme confidence. The emphasis on internal coherence implicit in fundamentalism facilitates development into Fowler's stage four where world coherence is explicit and there is 'clarity about boundaries and inner connections of [the] system’ (stage four). Fundamentalists learn about the why before they experience the what. There is little equitable epistemological synthesis between experience and attribution. There is little value placed on learning from experience. The fundamentalist's doctrine is a fait accompli. It does not evolve or develop - it is to be learned and embraced through obedience, rather than constructed and embraced through experience. It is for this reason that fundamentalism tends to limit development to stages of world coherence that are explicit having clarity

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about boundaries and inner connections of the system. To embrace multisystemic and unitive systems of coherence would be to succumb to the most subtle and potent of heresies - compromise.

Fowler describes later stages of world coherence as "multisystemic, unitive actuality felt and participated unity of One beyond the many". Fundamentalisms essentially view themselves as the One amid the many. This is perhaps the essential difference between fundamentalist and liberal understandings within the same tradition. The precocious childhood teaching of the fundamentalist meta-narrative may contribute to this self-perception as the One amid the many. The isolation and canonisation of the fundamentalist meta-narrative often removes it from the critical focus of its bearer. It becomes a closed system of logic protected from inspection by the powerful distancing and demonisation of its critics.

A meta-narrative may arrest development when it is learned precociously, uncritically, and remains detached from internalised and contextualised understanding. The difference between intrinsic (internalised) and superficial understanding is arguably a developmental difference. Intrinsic understanding of a meta-narrative results from creative, logical, and original abstraction and extrapolation beyond the familiar responses of a discourse passively received rather than actively constructed. It should be acknowledged here that a developmental epistemology underlies these assumptions.

World coherence forms a worldview and fundamentalist worldviews (like others) are protected and perpetuated by creed, doctrine, ritual, and canon administered in the security of community. These are the modes of the meta- narrative and the means of social transmission. At the same time, fundamentalism has been described as a reaction to modernity. The connection between these two characterisations of fundamentalism is enlightening. It reveals the power and preference of an epistemology tied to the language of creed and canon. The unquestioning allegiance to creed and canon characteristic of fundamentalism reflects a form of world coherence

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based on an external locus of authority and an early developmental understanding of the symbolic function of language. Piaget's observation that a child's "real religion, at any rate during the first years, is quite definitely anything but the over-elaborated religion with which he is plied" (1973:399-400) expresses the problem of fundamentalist systems that teach the content of world coherence before the ability to process it maturely has developed. What makes this a problem unique to fundamentalism is the absolute authority given to the contents, the value contents are given though detached from internalised understanding, and the inclusion of contents that promote fear of self-criticism.

Seldom do we seek to learn what we think we already know. This is the developmental danger of a precociously received discourse. If the child of fundamentalism is rewarded for memorising a scripture, singing a chorus well, repeating or forming a new analogy to reinforce preexisting contents, and punished for loitering on the boundaries of the discourse by using abstraction to question the sacred fundamentals - then the child will not develop the social awareness, unitive world coherence or symbolic function of later stages of development.

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2.3.6 Fundamentalism and Symbolic Function

The Aspect of Symbolic Function refers to the structured understanding of the relationship between the symbol and the symbolised. A symbol is one thing that represents another. Fowler's conception of symbolic function is perhaps indebted to theologian Paul Tillich's work in Dynamics of Faith (1957). Tillich (in Cohen, 1988:37) identifies a symbol as pointing beyond itself and participating in that to which it points. In the developmental discourse which is necessarily structuralist, language is both a symbol of reality and a reality itself. Language reflects a world beyond itself but creates a world within itself. Language speaks of existence and speaks into existence. This is an essential concept for the development study of faith and religion.

During Piaget's preoperational period, semiotic function enables representational thought. However, representational thought is not perceived as such during this stage. The sign and the symbol of semiotic function are synonymous with their realities. There is little differentiation between the two; "This notion that words or other signs are arbitrarily assigned to objects is not easy for the child to grasp. Young children think that an object's name is as intrinsic to the object as are its color and form" (Miller, 1993:52). Differentiation between the object and the sign or symbol increases throughout development.

In developmental terms symbolic understanding moves from the literal (no understanding of symbolic function), to the separative (distinguishing symbol from symbolised), to the irreducible (deliberate reconstruction and rejoining of symbol and symbolised). For Tillich and Fowler, religious symbols are as potent as their 'actualisation through unification of reality'. Tillich labels this reality the ultimate concern and Fowler labels it, ultimate environment. In fundamentalisms there is a characteristic tendency to defend the absolute uniqueness of a religious symbol. Any deviation, any unfamiliarity is immediately unacceptable. This accounts for the absolutism and separatism of many fundamentalisms. This absolute defence of the religious symbol could represent either the early stages of development wherein the symbol is

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defended because it is taken as a literal truth and not a symbol at all, or the later stages wherein the symbol is seen as the best possible representation of a reality that would be imperceptible without it. There are several characteristics of fundamentalism that suggest it is more representative of early stages of symbolic function development.

These characteristics include, literal interpretation and acontextual application of Scripture (text centred approach), prejudicial suspicion of other symbolic systems, reticence to reinterpret in light of evidence, and over-generalisation. There is little doubt that the hermeneutic most applied by Protestant fundamentalists is literalist. Kathleen Boone explores Protestant literalism in The Bible tells them so - the discourse of Protestant fundamentalism (1989). Literalism, coupled with an inerrant view of Scripture lends itself to acontextual application.

More extreme historical and contemporary examples include Protestant fundamentalist calls for the silence of women in church, instances of refusal to seek medical treatment, refusal of blood transfusions, defence of six-day creationism, call for the death penalty for homosexuals, denial of infant salvation, the condoning of slavery, flat earth belief, and geocentric cosmology - to name but a few. That many modern fundamentalists would refute the fundamentalist interpretations of the past only reveals, as Barr suggests, that "In order to avoid imputing error to the Bible, fundamentalists twist and turn back and forward between literal and non-literal interpretation" (1981:40).

In keeping with this paper's thesis, fundamentalists may develop in some Aspects within the closed system of logic that early stage structures reinforce. Early stages of symbolic function create literal interpretations that the abilities of later stages of symbolic function are used to verify. If a literal interpretation causes too much dissonance or inconvenience it may be softened by a symbolic or figurative approach. However, the stigma of changing one's interpretation within the fundamentalist community may be so great that symbolic understanding and particular contents of faith are best left

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unacquainted.

The prejudicial suspicion of other symbolic systems of faith characteristic of fundamentalism suggests that boundaries are defined, not by close examination of symbolised ethical and experiential realities, but by the immediate familiarity of the symbols themselves. Such symbols include ritual, language, and appearance. It is the sort of separatism based on first and external impressions unsupported by longevity and depth of relationship. It is the difference between intrinsic differentiation and extrinsic differentiation (Allport in Cohen, 1988:78). This same literalisation of symbol may in part account for the very factionalism within fundamentalism. Preconceived reluctance to seek commonality leaves a form of defensive isolationism. Coupled with a literalised understanding of symbolic function the potential for difference is increased. This is so, simply because the number of fundamentals increases.

Fundamentalism has been described as a reaction to modernity (Marty, 1991). This observation is congruent with the structuring of symbolic function just described. A tradition that protects its symbols as literal truths will initially view any foreign element suspiciously - especially when the foreign element is considered produced or purported by an epistemologically inferior group. Fundamentalism's identification with traditional, orthodox, or old time religion signifies its inherent suspicion of the new. James Barr, author of Fundamentalism (1981) attacks as delusion the Protestant Fundamentalist's self-identification with literal and orthodox interpretation by revealing the continuum drift between the self-proclaimed fundamentalists of the past and the present. Cohen (1988), like Barr, argues that fundamentalists are often relativist in their reaction to modernity. Babinski dedicates his testimonial, Leaving the Fold with a similar observation: To Protestant Fundamentalist Christians, who do not realize how liberal they have grown over the past few hundred years, and who may wish to consider alternatives to the "conservatism" they now embrace. (1995) While fundamentalists claim to interpret text literally they are selectively literal when insurmountable evidence makes a literal reading unfeasible. The emergence of selective literalisation may well be an indication of transition 214

between stages of symbolic function.

Symbolic Function and Understanding of Language Words are symbols - descriptions of a reality that is paradoxically beyond yet contained within the phonetics of speech and visuals of writing. Language is a representation of the world and a creation of the same. This is a complex and contentious relationship between two poles of traditional emphasis. An absolutist approach to language makes the link between language and reality inextricable and congruent such that little is lost in translation between the two. Fundamentalism has a characteristic linguistic absolutism. Don Cupitt summarises the view succinctly in The Long-Legged Fly (1987) believing that absolutists: ...are in grip of the ancient myth that language follows and conforms itself to nature...the idea that the world itself is already in a preliminary way linguistic, apart from us and prior to us. Human language follows, copies, obeys a pre- existent cosmic order and linguisticality. (57) Language reflects reality with such clarity and accuracy that it becomes synonymous with it. To make the distinction between the two is almost unnecessary.

A relativistic approach to language makes the link between language and reality so tenuous, so subjective, that for all practical purposes reality cannot be spoken about (except the reality that it cannot be spoken about!). Words shape the way we see the world, so we fancy that the world has shaped our words. In reality, language determines perception ... The word forms the perception (Cupitt, 1987:57) Relativism views the link between epistemology, cognition and language as so exclusive that there is no knowing beyond that which can be said. In ancient mythology the philosopher thought the flux of language rendered its meaning so useless that he refused to speak. This is the second extreme.

In Metaphor and Religious Language (1985), Janet Martin Solskice examines the confusion resulting from literalisation and failure to recognise metaphor in religious language. She quotes Marc Belth in a chapter entitled Metaphor and 215

'Words Proper': Not to recognise metaphors, but to speak or write them is to be used by those metaphors and to be entangled in them. To recognise them is to use them, consciously alert to the influence and consequences of their use...Indeed, a dead metaphor, a metaphor transferred into a literal statement is clearly mythic. (In Solskice: 70) Nietzsche viewed this transference of metaphor into literal statement as the "human tendency to view one's own manner of categorizing as 'fixed, canonic and binding' as the one true account of truth" (In Solskice: 78). A structural developmental approach views this tendency as relative to stage development.

The structural developmental approach encompasses both an absolutist and relativistic approach but denies the exclusivity of either one or the other. It acknowledges that language is a symbol often many times removed by culture, socialisation and tradition but retains the purposefulness of its symbolic function and the existence of ways of knowing a priori to their articulation. In developmental terms: '...language is used to express and explore experience. Language makes possible the "socialisation" of action schemata. They can be named, remembered and spoken about with others. Also inner states and feelings can be expressed (Fowler, 1981: 56). It is a principle of structural development that the use and understanding of language moves always from the literal to the symbolic, as from the concrete to the abstract.

Fowler observes the relationship between language and thought in the Intuitive- Projective stage: The production and repetition of vocal sounds, which elicit response and mutual imitation between parents and child, do not effectively come into the service of thought until the beginnings of the second year of life. At that point, when the convergence of thought and language begins to occur, the child takes hold of a qualitatively new and powerful kind of leverage on the world of experience. (123) Fowler goes on to say of the Stage One child, "And while the precursors of conceptual abstractions are present...only concrete symbols and images really 216

address the child's way of knowing" (129). Similarly in Fowler's early Mythic- Literal stage, "There is also a sense in which the meanings [of stories] are trapped in the narrative, there not being yet the readiness to draw from them conclusions about a general order of meaning in life" (137). In his summary of the Mythic-Literal stage Fowler observes that, "Beliefs are appropriated with literal interpretations, as are moral rules and attitudes. Symbols are taken as one-dimensional and literal in meaning" (149). The application of literal and symbolic understandings of language to fundamentalism and liberalism respectively provides a powerful model for describing the characterising distinctions of the same.

Fundamentalism is characterised by a sense of linguistic determinacy and literalisation synonymous with early Mythic-Literal, concrete stages of development. This may manifest itself as aggressive dogmatism, the defence (sometimes to death) of a particular creed, an with heresy, subscription to Biblical inerrancy and infallibility, popularisation of instantaneous conversion, separation based on articulation, and an interchangeable understanding of faith and belief.

The word dogmatism connotes aggressiveness. This not to say that the aggressive defence of one's belief is wrong or limited to early stage structures. It is to suggest however that the need to be aggressive in defence of one's belief is linked proportionally to its exclusivity or accommodation and that these are linked in turn to one's understanding of language. Babinski in Leaving the Fold (1995) goes so far as to equate archetypal fundamentalists with Colin Wilson's violent male: The Violent male-and almost all violence is committed by males-seems to be a man who literally cannot ever, admit he might be wrong. He knows he is right...this model describes not only many, many infamous criminals, but quite a few of the more infamous statesmen and churchmen of history, who were not called criminals only because they were powerful enough to define what was 'crime' in their society. (in Babinski: 27) This characteristic aggressiveness is noted also by Grace Halsell in her expose of fundamentalist politics Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the 217

Road to Nuclear War. Similarly, Marlene Winell's Leaving the Fold describes the authoritarian nature of fundamentalism as, 'stifling to the individual and cruel in its implications for others' (1993:92). Peter Cameron describes fundamentalists as 'very much at home with authority, obedience, and conformity'. The aggressiveness of fundamentalism is inextricably linked to the contents of its creed and the literalness of understanding.

For the fundamentalist, belief is literally a matter of life and death - eternal life in union with God and eternal death and suffering without God. These are the ultimate stakes. As such they call for extreme measures and utmost seriousness. They are the stakes that cause the fundamentalist to face persecution and rejection for sharing their beliefs. They are the stakes that cause the genuine suffering of carrying the burden for the lost if the lost are close and loved. Aggression is born of many things - fear, protectionism, guilt and hate to name a few. Aggression is necessary in the propagation of belief when one believes in two mutually exclusive forces, good and evil, embodied in God and Satan, warring literally in spiritual realms for the souls of humanity.

For the fundamentalist, eternal bliss and eternal suffering are monumental truths determined by seemingly fickle circumstances despite the assurance that God is sovereign and He does the converting. There is an evangelical aggression born of the belief that any one conversation (confrontation) may change the eternal destiny of the evangelised. There is a tangible fear and guilt that people are being lost for lack of sowers of the Word - the propagation of Christianity often becomes a mission of guilt rather than a spreading of good news. Such aggressive evangelism is a feature of almost all absolutist ideologies. Is it an expression of a literal understanding of language indicative of early stages of development? To answer this question one must turn to the source of the doctrine of heaven, hell, and salvation motivating such aggressive evangelism - the Bible.

At this point the discussion returns to the perspectives of fundamentalism and liberalism as previously defined. A fundamentalist is adamant that the Bible is

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literally the Word of God, inspired by God, a book like no other, and the ultimate authority on all issues concerning life and God. Now such tenets of belief may be held at many stages of development. The case in point is that the way they lend themselves to be held is a characteristic of fundamentalism. For such claims are usually made in denial of the legitimacy of any other system or articulation of belief. There is little attempt to look for similarities beneath culture dressings, little tolerance for . An example of this is the understanding of belief in Christ.

A literal interpretation of certain Scriptures finds that belief in Christ is the only means to salvation. The pivotal verse John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life" is a summary of fundamentalist doctrine. Coupled with literalisations of heaven and hell and the concept of original sin it is easy to see the black and white nature of the fundamentalist worldview. The world is fallen and perishing (going to hell). The only ones who escape this certain fate are those who believe in Christ.

The literal understanding of such scripture assumes many things. Such understanding assumes firstly; that heaven and hell are real places as described literally in the book of Revelation rather than symbols of states of being; secondly, that heaven and hell are divinely revealed truths rather than historically evolved and enculturated concepts; thirdly, that heaven and hell are totally separate from the realm of earth; fourthly, that the experience after death is of one or the other and not of both; and finally, that entry to either heaven or hell is determined by one's articulation of belief in Christ.

Thus the doctrinal approach of fundamentalism is both born of literal interpretation and perpetuating of literal interpretation. It ignores the symbolic function of language by failing to explore the essences of human experience below its writing and speaking, all the while severing itself from the possibility of synonymous language. In Fundamentalism there is the absolute defence of particular words in their literal visual or phonetic form. Fundamentalism while

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fulfilling the content requirements of early stages tends to retard growth into further stages: "A particular environment may halt, retard or accelerate the development, but does not modify the structures themselves" (Beilin, 1971:90). In liberalism there is the ability to abstract words from the truths they represent; the ability to recognise synonyms; the intrinsic ability to weigh the value of words between the power and flux of their ability to express and to create reality. The former is an expression of Mythic-Literal structures. The latter is a representative of later Conjunctive and Universal structures.

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2.3.7 Fundamentalism and Moral Judgment

Reflecting the work of Kohlberg, the Aspect of Moral Judgment explores structures of reasoning in response to moral dilemmas. Kohlberg used nine hypothetical dilemmas to explore such structures of moral judgement. His thesis was that moral judgement reflected universal stage structures ranging from an early form of reasoning based on an egoistic concern with punishment and obedience to later forms based on morally interdependent social and universal relationships.

The early stages of moral development, Punishment - Reward Orientation, and Instrumental Hedonism Orientation reflect a predominantly individualistic concern with well-being that is not yet linked to the well-being of the other. Such stages reflect a morality dictated by an external authority. Such authority is obeyed out of habit, fear of retribution and expectation of reward, rather than obedience due to reasonable trust. This is perhaps an inevitable consequence of comparative life experience between parent and child. To speak allegorically one must have lived long enough to touch enough hot plates or to learn about heat and pain in order to understand and reasonably trust an order not to do so. Habitual obedience reinforced by punishment and reward is a necessary mechanism of basic survival.

In later stages of development morality is perceived more as a practical matter of cause and effect in the context of a complex of social and universal interrelationships. Advanced reasoning allows for differentiation between contextual mores and moral imperatives, while recognising the symbolic relationship between the two. There is a dynamic tension between the active embrace of previously passively obeyed laws and the desire to reform and reinterpret the same in light of an ever-changing life context. The moral aspect of development reveals some interesting patterns in fundamentalism.

As a general observation, the fundamentalist tendency to deny the inherent moral capability of the individual reinforces the necessity for and power of an

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external locus of moral authority. A morality received from an absolute authority need only be obeyed, not intrinsically processed. The various loci of fundamentalist authority described in the previous section act as such absolutes. The conundrum for fundamentalism is that absolute moral submission to a perfectly moral authority fails to recognise that any concept of perfection is in part (or in whole) a product of imperfect human projection. Human agency and moral awareness are inseparable. To separate the human and the divine is to make the human less so. As such, any system of belief that denies and discourages the moral capability or responsibility of the individual so arrests development.

Such arresting beliefs are observable in a variety of fundamentalisms. The separation of law and grace in Christian theology has led fundamentalists to both extremes of the moral continuum. Some early Lutherans and Calvinists were charged with antinomianism which they believed to be defensible in light of the doctrine of salvation by grace, not works (Ferguson & Wright, 1988:379). The moralism of eighteenth century neonomians reflected the opposing emphasis on works as an indication of grace such that the two became practically inseparable. The significance of both extremes is their derivation from an external locus of authority (Scripture) given absolute authority over any intrinsic sense of morality. The fundamentalist's view of the morality of the unsaved reflects a disregard for the moral capacity of those beyond the discourse of fundamentalism. Barr writes concerning the fundamentalist attitude, "the morality of the unsaved person is likely to be both hypocritical and prideful: at most, it is lightened by occasional rays of light communicated by conscience and the like, but these partial forms of light only make darker and more blameworthy the darkness that generally prevails" (1981:25). If an individual is not given agency in morality or even invited into the moral process as a conscionable being then they will not be encouraged to develop an intrinsic capacity for moral judgment.

The deliberate separatism and isolationism of fundamentalisms has the effect of limiting the universal morality of Kohlberg's stage five. Similarly, the separation

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of moral capacity from individual being tends to effectively limit the loyalty to being indicative of stage six. While fundamentalists see their morals as being universally applicable, they are morals that must be received from external sources, rather than evoked from within. Hence, there is a tendency for fundamentalisms to be aggressively evangelistic with moral codes and mores. Similarly, when being is perceived as essentially morally flawed there is little encouragement of loyalty to existence. In some fundamentalisms there is a distinctive subjugation of humanness, a suspicion of human desire, and a distrust of the human condition. Such core beliefs find expression in many parts of the discourse. In Protestant fundamentalism the human condition outside of the fold is characterised by darkness. As Kathleen Boone observes, fundamentalists perceive themselves, "either steadfast in absolute truth or whirling in the vortex of nihilism" (1989:24). When such absolute truth is accessible only through the select, acculturated and contextualised knowledge of Scripture there will be little loyalty to being (fallen as it is perceived to be) as a structure for moral judgment.

The fundamentalist's moral judgment is distrustful of self, relying on external authority as a canon. This is not say that a canon does not reflect or express the conscionable self; indeed it often does and is necessarily a first product of the same. However, over time and through tradition it becomes removed from the process and context that first formulated it. Such tradition becomes impervious to criticism and the dynamic reinterpretation that characterises development. Development does not necessarily require a change of content but it changes qualitatively the way in which particular contents are held. New ways of perceiving contents may well lead to new contents that express the perception more clearly, differentiated from unwanted stigma. To discourage such change through blind, unquestioning, non-dialectic, acceptance is to arrest the moral development.

Conclusion The above discussion is exploratory. It is an introduction to, not an exhaustive analysis of, what is truly an inexhaustible subject. It is also conceptual - born of

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the same resonance that precedes all theory and leads to further empirical investigation. It is a theory of synthesis, informed by existing and extensive empirical and historical research in the fields of human development and fundamentalism. If cognitive development has any credibility (and I believe it does) then it must factor, to a greater or lesser extent, in the expression of religious fundamentalism.

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2.3.8 Fundamentalism as Arrested Development

Compartmentalisation It is essential to diverge at this point and encounter some of the obvious and legitimate questions raised in the previous section. Is it the suggestion of this thesis that fundamentalists are stage regressive and liberals are stage advanced? Can a child be a liberal? Can a fundamentalist be an abstract thinker? Can fundamentalist tenets be held with a liberal mindset and vice- versa? Is the content of belief related to the structure of believing? These are complex questions. They question the very application of a structural developmental discourse. They must be answered with legitimate complexity so as not to over-simplify the contentions of this thesis.

Answers to these questions can be given by stating and exploring five principles. Firstly, fundamentalist and liberal beliefs are not exclusively interchangeable with fundamentalism and liberalism as defined herein. Secondly, fundamentalism is a manifestation of a normal and necessary stage of development. Thirdly, beliefs arising from stage structures protect the equilibrium of the stage by restricting further development. Fourthly, social transmission can overbear other structuring areas. Fifth, Knowledge and process are often compartmentalised for cognitive consonance.

The sum of Fundamentalist beliefs does not equal fundamentalism. From the very first chapter this thesis has contended that belief is part but not the whole of the faith that is fundamentalism. It is futile to try to separate the two in any quantitative sense. In a qualitative sense belief is an expression (an all too often inaccurate expression) of a more holistic faith. Nor is belief totally separable from faith - for it reciprocates faith.

This is an important distinction. For it is not a contention of this thesis that those who claim to hold the tenets common to fundamentalism are necessarily in early stages of cognitive development. It is the way in which these tenets are held and the reasons why they are held which are the primary developmental

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concerns of this thesis. Fundamentalism lends itself to fundamentalists and vice-versa. This is more than mere truism. It is another way of saying that not all who claim to be fundamentalists are encompassed by its true definition herein. However, it has also been maintained that there is a significant connection between the content of a belief and the way in which it is held.

Fundamentalism is a manifestation of a normal and necessary stage of development. It is not an intention of this thesis to demonise fundamentalism. The following paragraphs will discuss the aspects of fundamentalism that require criticism from a structural developmental perspective. These are namely the self-protection mechanisms that inevitably and meaningfully stunt faith development. This having been anticipated it is important to assure the normality and necessity of stage structures generating fundamentalism.

All children learn content before they are able to understand, internalise, and abstract principles from it. All children project anthropomorphically. It is inevitable that children will be exposed to content formulated with adult understandings that they will not yet be able to access. Normal development often facilitates a growing appreciation and understanding (if not acceptance) of the parent behaviours so often misunderstood in childhood. There are many ways of looking at and talking about the existence of such a progression. In a religious context development is the basis of free will - the belief that humans have somewhere meaningful to will themselves. It is the hindrance of willful development where it exists, that is the failing of Fundamentalism. In many other areas it may serve indirectly, to facilitate development.

Beliefs arising from stage structures protect the equilibrium of the stage thus restricting further development. Leaving a worldview (or at least being seen to leave a worldview) is a difficult step. It is for this reason that a crisis of faith is so named. Again, there are many ways of talking about the self-protection of belief. Dawkins (1993) and similar commentators speak in terms of memes - the selfish and self-replicating units of belief. Fundamentalists themselves speak metaphorically of sheep leaving the fold, coals out of the fire, of

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backsliding, turning one's back on the Cross, and losing faith. It is such labels, the associated guilt, the social separation, the fear of stepping into the unknown - of leaving the security of the familiar, of being deceived, of moral degradation, and ultimately the fear of eternal retribution, that form the front lines of fundamentalism.

These fears and insecurities are entrenched in powerful mythologies and empowered by repetitive discourse. Staying within this discourse is often easier than leaving it. Psychologist Marlene Winell identifies the intense feelings of confusion and guilt as part of a gradual process of recovery: Whether sudden or gradual, breaking away usually creates a state of serious confusion...Letting go of such a massive structure can leave you feeling totally adrift. The sense of existential angst can be intense as you struggle to get a new foothold on life...the fears instilled by the religion itself can produce additional anxiety. You were taught that if you did not believe you would go to hell...there may be times of near panic, when you wonder whether you've made a terrible mistake and will be forever damned. You might have trouble with intense feelings in this phase because you have been taught to interpret them as "conviction of the Holy Spirit". (1993:17) Thus, fear of change (development) is the greatest maintainer of the fundamentalist equilibrium.

The other great maintainer of equilibrium in Fundamentalism is censorship. Fundamentalist communities are often isolationist - in the world but not of the world and set apart. The transference of cognitive development and the developing ability to abstract principles inevitably raises questions for the developing fundamentalist. The aforementioned fear of doubt coupled with superficial answers (cliches), and a prepared diet of apologetic authors often serves to answer or distract such questions. Minski suggests that; 'a child develops metal sensors that ward off the internalization of potentially threatening memes' (In Gabora, 1999:10). Gabora gives the example of creationist reactions to the memes of natural selection in relation to this process (1999:10).

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Perhaps the biggest deterrent from asking ultimate questions of fundamentalism is the fear of loneliness and isolation should one not be satisfied with the standard answers. It is easier to answer a question when one has access to other's answers. Fundamentalism has so demonised and censored others answers that one is left in a metaphysical vacuum. At this stage many retreat back to the familiar - rebuilding the broken threads of the web of discourse with the rhetoric of a thousand ready weavers.

In structural developmental terms this retreat is a return to equilibrium. If the accommodation is too painful and disruptive to the equilibrium then the assimilating content will be rejected - and the process of development halted. To explain this point further, a concept from the research discourse of worldview proves helpful - that is the concept of compartmentalisation as a mechanism of cognitive dissonance and cognitive critical mass.

The psychology of worldview maintenance is a discipline in and of itself. The concept of cognitive censoring and compartmentalisation appear in many forms. What is presently termed doubt and dissonance may be known as inconsistencies in other research paradigms. Worldview researcher Liane Gabora provides an interesting perspective on the issue of dissonance leading to compartmentalisation, censorship, or as she calls it - annealing of the conceptual network: In regions of the conceptual network where inconsistencies abound, a cognitive analog of stimulated annealing is in order; there is a willingness to question previous assumptions - to 'loosen' conceptual relationships - so as to let new concepts thoroughly percolate through the worldview and exert the needed revolutionary effect. In so doing there is a risk of assimilating dangerous concepts. Repression arrests the process by which dangerous thoughts infiltrate the conceptual network, and deception blocks thoughts that have already been assimilated. (1999:1) The mechanisms for maintaining cognitive consistency presented here may be discussed within the structural developmental discourse.

As the five interrelated factors of development (maturation, logico-mathematical

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experience, physical experience, social transmission, and equilibration) interact throughout the lifecycle the ability to abstract and transfer principles occurs. This ability is perhaps what causes the initial questions and doubts, which begin to affect the developing fundamentalist. Creative thinking (or scheme transference) allows compatibility testing between areas of worldview. Ultimately this is what creates stronger worldviews. It is a micro-process of assimilation and accommodation. The fundamentalist approach to such compatibility testing is to provide standard solutions. While inevitable, this tendency circumvents the normal process of assimilation and accommodation. Religious Psychologist Philip Helfaer would perhaps call this - precocious identity formation wherein one is given contents beyond one's cognitive grasp to use for identification (1972).

When questions, doubts, and change persist due to scheme transference compartmentalisation may prevent the reaching of a critical mass necessitating worldview change. Compartmentalisation refers to the closing off of certain areas to scheme transference. In colloquial terms it is to put in the too hard basket any transference causing cognitive dissonance. As a fundamentalist if one finds a seeming inconsistency in the Bible or in a sermon one may close off the ability to associate the two by compartmentalising them. If one struggles with the moral implications of a theological concept one may learn not to relate the theological concept with its implications by adopting euphemisms to soften the implications or by compartmentalising the components (refusing to think of them simultaneously).

Fundamentalists developing in this area often find it difficult to talk about the reality of hell. They prefer to concentrate on the reality of heaven. They talk about the hell-bound in very euphemistic terms. When speaking of the millions who will and have perished without hearing the saving gospel they speak of the exception, the anecdotal convert or miracle instance of supernatural conversion.

This notion of compartmentalised or selective (stunted) development is important to the overall thesis of this thesis. It provides explanation for the

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seeming retention of fundamentalistically held contents by developmentally progressed individuals. Thus, the discussion returns to its initial question, "can a fundamentalist be an abstract thinker where the ability to abstract represents developed thinking"? The answer is an emphatic and obvious "yes". However, like all other developing humans there are social limits for abstraction. In fundamentalism's case, the compartments of its own epistemology and the literalness of it tenets are taboo. The socio-religious discouragement of abstraction and divergence subdues the developmental tendency, or at least restricts it to cognitive compartments that are seen not to threaten religious contents.

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2.3.9 Conclusion

The synthesis between fundamentalism and developmentalism presented in this chapter and culminating in the previous part has made some significant claims and cautions. The synthesis has revealed that the dynamics and dimensions of religious fundamentalism, observed internally and externally are powerfully described by developmentalists’ descriptions of early stages. Fundamentalism generally manifests the structuring tendencies of concrete and early formal stages of development across several domains as described by Piaget, Kohlberg, Fowler, Selman, Levinson, Erikson, Oser and Gmünder.

The following chapter of this study derives several principles for the practice of a developmentally sensitive religious education. These principles are grounded in the general finding of the synthesis so far; that fundamentalism does not enable a full and uninhibited appropriation of developed faith in all its dimensions.

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3. DISCUSSION

3.1 Religious Education and Developmental Sensitivity

Introduction

A developmental approach to education is nothing new. expressed the essence of a developmental approach some 1600 years ago: But as we are now treating of instructing candidates, I can testify to you of my own experiences that I am differently stirred according as he whom I see before me waiting for instruction is cultivated or a dullard...of this or that age or sex. (In Groome,1980:254) Some 800 years later theologian made the statement, “Quidquid recipitur, secundum modum recipientis recipitur” (That which is received, is received according to the recipient). Piaget's reflects some 700 years later: The principal goal of education is to create men [sic] who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers. The second goal of education is to form minds, which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered. The great danger is of slogans, collective opinions, ready-made trends of thought. (In Groome, 248) The developmental approach is further focussed by Fowler's developmental theory: Being and becoming a person in Christian faith is a process of formation and maturation. It is a human developmental process and thus Fowler's description of life's faith journey can inform our educational practice. (Groome, 66) Finally, developmentalists Oser and Gmünder make the connection between education, religion, and development that is the closest point of departure for the following discussion: …religious education needs to pay more attention to the different levels of children’s interpretive capacities as well as to the structural-developmental orientation 232

in general. (1991, 154) Such thoughts provide a context for discussion of an education that is both dynamic and developmental. The uniqueness of the discussion is its contextualisation within the synthesis of religious fundamentalism and developmental theory.

Religious Fundamentalist Schooling in Australia

Fundamentalist schools exist as a deliberate philosophical alternative to secular state schools, secular private schools, and even mainstream church affiliated schools (Anglican and Catholic). Fundamentalist schools are usually directly affiliated with Pentecostal denominations or umbrella organisations with strong links to fundamentalist denominations such as conservative Baptist, evangelical Anglican, Presbyterian or Methodist denominations. In Australia alone there are over 70 schools affiliated with Christian Parent Controlled Schools (CPCS). CPCS has strong ties with the National Institute for Christian Education (NICE) and NICE is strongly influenced by the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI). How do such schools view their place in the broader national context?

Principal of NICE Richard Edlin, rationalises the separatist view of such schools in his definitive The Cause of Christian Education (1999): Academics in secular circles have long prided themselves with their so-called objectivity. The fact that this pretense at neutrality is logically impossible in an atmosphere where there are incredible pressures brought to bear by the academic establishment for the faculty to pro- actively maintain a politically correct position on many issues, has been lost on many of them. One of the ways that this political correctness has been evident has been the discrimination against scholars and scholarship that acknowledges strong religious viewpoints, especially conventional Christian ones. While other deeply religiously based and strongly proselytizing perspectives like militant feminism and scientific rationalism are not only tolerated but actively endorsed on campus, Christians and their perspectives have been considered appropriate material for derision and scorn. (1999:47)

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This fear of secular discrimination and ironically, an equally powerful culture of reverse discrimination of secular academia within fundamentalist education, perpetuates its existence. This is not to argue the ethics of either case (the chicken or the egg?) but to identify the philosophical bedrock of separatist fundamentalist education - the myth of neutrality.

Edlin devotes a whole chapter of The Cause of Christian Education to debunk, as titled, The Myth of Religious Neutrality in Education. The myth of religious neutrality is demonised in fundamentalist schooling. It is seen as the Devil's most powerful weapon (convincing people that he does not exist). Edlin sees the neutrality philosophy as the principal evil of western education: The frightful tragedy is that the claim that education is religiously neutral is a myth of gigantic proportions. It's a lie that has had the most fearful implications for generations of Christians and their children. One of the loudest trumpets that Christians must blow today is the clarion call that denounces this myth. (1999:42) Edlin's fears are well founded. However, it is the contention of this thesis that Christian fundamentalism's fears are founded on secular reflections of its own base structures. The very irrational discrimination by secular education that Edlin writes about is itself, a defining feature of fundamentalist education. Both fail to transcend the superficial literalities of language. Both secular and religious fundamentalism fear difference on the level of language. This is not to deny the connection between language and that which it expresses; it is to say that one is an expression, not entirely synonymous with the other.

Edlin's call for educational separatism is based on the fundamentalist view that Scripture is Truth, rather than reflective of truths. This is a subtle but powerful difference in perspective. In a chapter titled, The Place of the Bible in the Christian School, Edlin includes a section under the title All True Knowledge is Biblically Founded. In this section he writes, "The Bible alone, as God's written revelation, has divine authority and reliability" (58). He then quotes Stuart Fowler in Michielsen's (Chairman of CPCS), No Icing on the Cake: ...Educational directions in the Christian school are not chosen on the basis of faith in reason, or in practical experience, or in human personality but by the 234

leading of the faith that is directed by the saving Word of God given in the Scriptures". (In Edlin,1999:59) There is tendency in fundamentalism to separate reason, experience, and personality from Scriptural truth rather than to acknowledge them as inextricably related to one's interpretation of Scripture.

Fundamentalism asks, how does one know what is truth and what is not, without the standard of Scripture? It is a legitimate question given an understanding of truth as fixed and clearly able to be articulated in words. Such truth is static and packaged, known or not known, articulated or non- existent. It is a vision of truth that leads to what Piaget calls a "copying" and Paulo Freire, a "banking" form of education: For Piaget the teacher's job is never to transmit facts and concepts to passive recipients, but rather to direct the learning process so that students can act on both a physical and a mental level to arrive at facts and concepts as their own. (Groome, 1980:249) A fundamentalist system of belief that values a formulaic profession of belief as the defining moment in eternal existence will always teach its young to believe before it teaches them to think.

The danger of such a predisposition to banking education is that of arrested development or as it has been called it in previous section precocious identity formation. In writing of early presentations of a belief's story and vision, Groome (1980) warns: The presentations should also emphasize that there will always be more to discover about the Story and its Vision; to make the version of them presented sound too final at this stage can arrest the pilgrimage toward maturity of Christian faith. (253) R.S. Lee, author of Your Growing Child and Religion (1965) echoes this warning, "Direct religious education is premature and may result in so arresting the development of the child that he [sic] cannot pass through the phases necessary to his free growth" (162). Hence, a central concern of this thesis is; that fundamentalism maintains the equilibrium of the Mythic-Literal stage of its genesis such that it arrests further development. It stunts developmental

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growth in some aspects by presenting truth as fixed, content based, absolute, and statically knowable at its earliest articulation.

In contrast, a developmental view of truth is directional but dynamic, developmental and multi-dimensional; content facilitating process rather than defining process, revealing rather than revealed. One is not given the truth; one grows into it. Creeds are its shells; they house it for a time in a given context. Thus, the question may be reciprocated given the ethical similarities, common experiences and common goals of adherents of different creeds - how do they know what is truth and what is not, without the standard of Scripture? These are difficult concepts to explain but nonetheless they provide the structural- philosophical premises for considering developmentally sensitive religious education.

Developmentally sensitive education respects the equilibrium of stage structures while facilitating further development. There are two cautions to be sounded before attempting to define some principles of developmentally sensitive religious education. The first is to affirm the integrity of all stages of development. Groome summarises Fowler's conviction that: "...each stage has its own integrity. Stage four is not "more faithful" than stage three; rather, it is a more developed and mature expression of faith than stage three (In Groome, 1980:69). My criticisms of fundamentalism are directed not at its worth as a vehicle for expressing and realising stage structures, rather they are directed at the element of fundamentalism that assumes itself to be fully developed and is therefore arresting of further development, even into its own beliefs.

The second caution concerns the application of structural developmental stages. These stages are not clearly delineated; they are "tentatively descriptive" not "definitively prescriptive" (Groome, 1980:66). They are applied with caution and should be understood qualitatively rather than quantitatively. Fowler himself advises such caution and is carefully nuanced and tentative in his claims. He offers his findings as provisional, warning that the stages of faith development are not to be reified nor lead to a "pigeon hole 236

mentality." They can be a useful "lens or filter system" for viewing the process of faith development, but they can also "blur and obscure" (Groome, 1980:66) To neglect such a caution and apply such theory with absolute certainty and measure would be to succumb to the same limitations of vision as fundamentalist structure. This said, it is possible to begin a cautious identification of some principles of developmentally sensitive education in a Christian context.

A developmentally sensitive education may embrace the following principles. It is essentially: Holistic, Dynamic, Progressive, Experiential, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Meta-Contextual, Objective, and Critically Reflective.

These are broad principles. Their application to specific educational programs, and practical pedagogy depends largely on individual school contexts. There is rarely total congruency between policy and the practice it seeks to inform and direct. There have been extensive attempts to inform developmentally sensitive practice in religious schooling. Groome's Christian Religious Education (1980), Lee's Your Growing Child and Religion (1965), Holm's Teaching Religion in Schools (1975), Goldman's Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (1964), and Elliott's Exploring Religions and Faith at School (1986). All such attempts try to match pedagogical practice with the developmental levels of students thus avoiding what Objectivist Psychologist Robert Campbell calls the "adultomorphic" (2000:2) tendency to assume and project one's own cognitive structuring as age-universal.

However, there have been few attempts to understand the fundamentalist - liberal divide within the context of Christian education that have approached the subject from any angle other than the content of belief. The following exposition of the above principles is the culmination of the structural developmental theory herein. They are offered as considerations for the implementation of developmentally sensitive religious education within Christian schooling.

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Holistic Education A holistic education caters for the emotional, intellectual, physical, social, moral and spiritual elements of a person. This is not to say that emphasis is equal or that one element may not rightly be presumed within another. It is to say that the educational neglect of a very real area of human experience may arrest development in that area.

A holistic education is one in which faith is fostered in all dimensions as a social, moral, emotional, physical and intellectual phenomena. Christian educators such as Groome have long recognised the importance of holistic education in a Christian context: We must be concerned about the development of the whole person. We may not have the time or opportunity to be involved in developing all the human capabilities of our students, but such capabilities are our concern, even as our priority remains faith education. (1980:77) The total submission of the fides qua (that by which we believe) to the fides quae (that which we believe) will serve to compartmentalise rather than permeate an expression of faith. In light of previous analysis, this is a danger posed by fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism provides a total ideology – that is, its principles assume to permeate and subordinate all discourses of knowledge. The grand narrative of fundamentalism has some positive effects in that the interconnectivity of knowledge discourses is valued and studied. However, this is not to be confused with holistic education, which is equally concerned with the fides qua.

Dynamic Education A dynamic education is sensitive to the changing needs, perspectives, and understanding of the developing person. It is not a one size fits all, all the time approach. It recognises and caters for a variety of structural levels while facilitating development between such levels. While all education needs structure there must be a certain amount of flexibility within structure to cater for contextual and individual change.

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Jean Holm, author of Teaching Religion in School (1975) offers a developmental scaffold of religion units catering from Year One to Year Five (British schooling). She recognises that: The units would need to be tackled in a different way with older pupils, and the actual decisions about content and method would be taken in the light of the intellectual and emotional stages of development of the pupils concerned. (138) This is a dynamic approach to a developmentally sensitive education.

Fundamentalism tends to foreground content rather than balance process in the context of religious education. It “overlooks that contents, including religious contents, are not only actively affected by their recipients but actually first activated in that process” (Oser and Gmünder, 1991:168). The result is a static content-based education or what Fowler calls precocious identity formation – the child identifies with contents given, not reached and is not encouraged to grow-into the contents known. A dynamic education, in contrast balances content and process, always acknowledging the relationship between the two through accommodation and assimilation in individual development.

Progressive Education A makes the assumption that development leads somewhere qualitatively valuable. Without this assumption there is little cause to voice concern about arrested development (or anything else!). It is an implicit assumption in developmental psychology that maturity is a more desirable state than immaturity - but that maturity is the incremental effect of healthy encounters without maturity - or with maturity at lesser levels. In the context of Christianity, progressive education makes the assumption that maturity is the purpose underlying learning and that maturity exhibits particular moral behaviours. It is necessary to be cautious in any prescription of such behaviours less morals be confused with mores. Nonetheless, it is important that developmentally sensitive education has a sense of direction. It values journeys and destinations without drawing too fine a distinction between the two. An experiential education is one in which knowledge progresses in relationship 239

with life experience. Thus, life experience is provided to complement and internalise knowledge. Such an education is socially embedded. Students are not preparing for the real world, they are participating in the real world. An experiential education constantly provides students with opportunities for real and practical application at an appropriate developmental level. This means that religious education must be relevant and accessible: If religious education does not make connections with what young people see spirituality to be about, there is a greater likelihood that they will look at the religious education content in a kind of clinical anthropological way - interesting because it exists and people believe it, but the overall impression is that it has no compelling links with what students themselves experience as important issues of life. (Rossiter in Ryan, 1999: 3) This relationship between knowledge and experience would aid in avoiding precocious identity formation and the associated arrested development. Experiential pedagogy subjects knowledge to empirical inquiry, which consolidates understanding and internalisation.

Fundamentalism places a high value and much emphasis on knowledge that is empirically inaccessible to the individual. Indeed, one of the uses (misuses?) of the term faith describes the assent to such prepositional and empirically unverifiable knowledge. While such faith is a common and necessary form it causes developmental problems when it is seen to devalue the use of available empirical or experiential learning. In discourses where doubt is demonised and blind faith is rewarded, learning by dialectic or experience is not valued as highly as prepositional assent.

Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Education Interpersonal and intrapersonal education recognises that development is always subject to societal and self-awareness. Humans develop in relation to, and in relationship with others. Learning is interpersonal. Humans become active in development through intrapersonal education. As development occurs in awareness of self, the individual has an increasing ability to participate meaningfully, actively, and consciously in their own development. Intrapersonal education provides opportunities for reflection and introspection in order to 240

facilitate stage development from egocentric to universal perspective taking.

Fundamentalist education is intensely intrapersonal and actively encourages self awareness within the boundaries of discourse. It is also interpersonal fostering learning within close-knit communities. The fundamentalist individual and community are typically self-aware. The difficulty is that this closeness of community and awareness of self seem to exist in proportion to the demonisation of those outside of the community and the experience of the individual other. Fowler’s suggests that this is a characteristic of early stage social-perspective taking. In an educational context a developmental model could emulate the self-awareness fostered by fundamentalist communities while extending the definition of community to other discourses.

Meta-Contextual Education A meta-contextual education recognises both the incremental and contextual nature of learning. It seeks to scaffold learning incrementally in all disciplines. Holm's model of incremental and contextualised units of religious education provides an example: If the students were keen to discuss problems of philosophical theology such as miracle or the , then it would be essential to precede such a discussion by 'Asking Questions' and 'What is Belief?'... It is always important to ask: What knowledge and understanding would the pupils have brought to a particular study...What are the key elements which this unit assumes and builds on, and which must therefore be included if it is to be adequately done? (1975:180) At later stages of development students could participate in the process of scaffolding and constructing such learning contexts. This meta-activity allows the learning contexts and mega-scaffolds (worldviews, discourses) of knowledge to remain dynamic. In developmental terms such meta-contextual education mimics the fundamental processes of accommodation and assimilation.

Fundamentalist education tends to protect the young from meta-language because it is seen as a product of a philosophically biased discipline that 241

questions the correlation between truth and language. Meta-discussion of belief, faith, and fundamentals admits a human subjectivity that can only be resolved with an appeal to revelation, inspiration and inerrancy of the Word.

Objectified Education An objectified education assumes an underlying faculty of humanity - the ability to choose. This is not to engage a discussion on the philosophy of free-will. It is to recognise a principle that underlies fair, open, and honest representation of diverse beliefs in the context of schooling. Objective education recognises its own subjectivity while affirming the existence of very real criteria for human choices. While it recognises the immediate truth of Edlin's claim that educational neutrality is a myth it affirms the value of being able to step outside one's own position. Whether or not such a step should result in change, rejection or affirmation (Lovat, 1992:4), it is necessary to facilitate the developmental processes of accommodation and assimilation.

Honest Representation In terms of Christian education, objectivity means honest representation. Honest representation refers to the ways in which teachers represent the other or difference. It is a maxim in teaching religion that 'one should never represent others as they would not represent themselves' (Holm, 1975:55). Empathy and understanding if not reconciliation come through a true appreciation of the sincerity and humanity of the other: One of our main aims in teaching about the other religions is to help our pupils to stand where the believer stands, to see what his (sic) religion must look - and feel - like to him (Holm:55). Honest representation is essential to the beginning of dialogue between worldviews and faiths. Senior lecturer in Religious Education, Maurice Ryan acknowledges the relationship between honest representation and the development of empathy in Study of Religion Courses in Australian Schools: A Critical Evaluation : In this way students are helped by the teacher to engage in warm empathetic study of religious traditions without clouding their judgments of those traditions with potentially prejudicial evaluations. (1999:3) 242

There are traps and snares along the way to prevent honest representation but it is a process worth believing in if indeed Fowler's structural development represents desirable qualitative changes in the human psyche. If any education is to have credibility it must first have the integrity to represent other systems as they would represent themselves. This is the basic premise of objective education.

Critically Reflective Education A critically reflective education constantly reflects on its own practices in relation to the practices of others. Where policy documents guide the educational direction of a school there needs to be an understanding of the relationship between the transience of language and the permanency of a formal written policy. Those who formulate such guiding documents need to do so with an awareness of the structures and worldviews that will be used to interpret the same.

In the context of Christian education where school policy and ethos are couched in religious symbols these symbols need to be explained and their meanings or appearance as symbols not assumed. This notion of explicit symbolism as a critically reflective practice extends to all levels of the formal policy or ethos' devolution into school community. Teachers need to take time to understand their role as facilitators of educational policy and formal ethos. This needs to be an active role and not a passive one. The rituals, activities, and ceremonies constructed around formal policy and ethos need to be explained and laid open for students to consciously participate in. The cliches and rhetoric of teacher talk likewise need to be laid open for students to actively engage in rather than passively receive.

Critical reflection is a necessary part of this process of laying open symbolism. Students need to access developmentally appropriate skills for understanding the layers of meaning that operate within the school context. Likewise teachers need to be given the skills and freedom to engage the symbolic levels of the school context. This process of inquiry can be difficult as teachers and students

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alike come to terms with their own and each other's worldview and faith. There needs to be both intellectual and emotional support for participants learning to change or to live with difference. Part of learning to live with difference is having empathy for the different. The aforementioned social perspective taking necessary for higher stage development needs to be nurtured in this critically reflective environment.

Summary All of these considerations of practice exist for the achievement of active participation. pedagogy and school ethos should ultimately facilitate students' actualisation and internalisation of the objectives of a developing faith. Pedagogy needs to integrate theory with practice as a reality check for the meaning of symbols. In an article on adolescent male spirituality, Julie Collins notes the importance of actualising symbols and rituals: First, rituals cease to have the power to transform us if our symbol systems have lost their energy. Second, symbols lose their energy when the culture that creates them forgets what they mean. Last...symbols are also debased when people no longer have a communal experience that centers them (1999:10). Formal educational policy and ethos will never leave the paper they are written on, if they are not actualised through the experiences of the students to whom they are applied.

Summarily, a developmentally sensitive education places the philosophy and practice of learning in a dynamic relationship. This relationship between structural developmentally driven theory and the everyday practice of schooling reflects the foundational processes of assimilation and accommodation that paradoxically maintain equilibrium and facilitate human development. Fundamentalism may be valued and understood in such a context. Any criticism must be founded on its ability to maintain equilibrium while freeing development toward maturity in faith.

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4. CONCLUSION

4.1 Summary of Findings

The findings of this study are best summarised in response to the initial objectives described in Chapter One. The following findings summary is presented in light of the analysis and synthesis throughout the three parts of Chapter Two.

The encompassing objective of this study was to provide a synthesis between the discourses of religious fundamentalism and structural-developmental psychology. Both discourses make universal claims. Logically, these universal claims are mutually encompassing. One way to refine a discourse is to find exceptions that challenge its rules and force redefinitions of its boundaries. Universal claims as powerful as those of fundamentalisms and developmentalism need to be theoretically and empirically tested against each other. Theoretical scrutiny can raise questions for later empirical testing. Theoretical scrutiny can also use logic’s law of non-contradiction to search for internal coherence and the universal applicability of universal claims. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyse these two discourses side by side and examine the problems faced and solved through synthesis.

A primary objective was to examine the metaphor of development. If the developmental discourse indirectly attributes the observed characteristics, dynamics and dimensions of fundamentalisms to early ‘stages of development’, is the metaphor of development appropriate? The study concluded that the metaphor of development must be separated from its economic value-laden context. Similarly, it is not useful as a description of progressive ‘fit’, ‘efficacy’ or ‘usefulness’. The study emphasised the connectedness and internal consistency of stages.

The study found a clear ‘fit’ between the independently described dynamics and

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dimensions of fundamentalisms and the stage descriptors of early developmental stages. The contents and dynamics of fundamentalism resist the development of later stage structures. However, the study found that fundamentalism provides challenges to some traditional emphases and understandings of developmentalism and interactionism.

The study of fundamentalism in light of developmentalism emphasises the structuring power of contents. The place of nurture or socialisation has always been recognised within developmentalism, but rarely explored as an organised inhibitor, or mechanism of arrest to stage transition. The contents of fundamentalisms directly oppose the epistemological tendencies of later stages. The structuring power of these contents raises the question of relationship between phylogenetic behaviours and ontogenetic development. This question must be taken seriously by the developmental approach as it will help to define the relationship between innate structuring tendencies and environmental influences affecting development.

The analysis also revealed the significance of compartmentalisation for developmentalism. The study of fundamentalism reveals that development may be compartmentalised. Structuring tendencies applied to one domain will not necessarily be applied to another. This finding has implications for traditional understandings of the age-stage relationship in developmentalism. The study of fundamentalism also reveals the powerful effects of stage transition, manifest as crises of faith and the affective conflict between maturation and content centred discourses constructed to maintain equilibrium.

The study reveals the potential for a form of recapitulated fundamentalism prompted by dissonance between convergent epistemologies and the emerging divergent epistemologies of later development. In this scenario, some fundamentalists seem to have recapitulated a form of fundamentalism in response to the early onset of, or transition to, later stages of developing faith. This tendency (discussed in light Oser and Gmünder’s stages of religious judgment in Chapter Two) raises questions about the unidirectional nature of

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development and consequently about the appropriateness of the developmental metaphor.

While identifying these gaps in developmental theory, the study affirmed the descriptive power of the developmental discourse in accommodating and synthesising a range of independent approaches to fundamentalism. Chapter Two, Part Two revealed that developmentalism can accommodate both sociological and psychological approaches. Its stage descriptors provide a powerful model for understanding the psychology of both fundamentalist and liberal epistemologies and their associated discourses.

Finally, these findings were used to generate some basic principles for a developmentally sensitive approach to religious education. These principles (outlined in Chapter Three) were posited in order to facilitate a full appropriation of stage equilibration and transition with a balance between contents, structuring tendencies and maturation.

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4.2 Further Research

All new research is generated by the perceived need to fill a gap in existing research or theory. At the conclusion of this thesis it is easy to look back and see the gaps that more research could fill, tangents further research could pursue; and the different discourses further research could apply to the same objective questions. What follows is a brief identification of the gaps that the very real constraints of time, money, knowledge, and resources have left open in this thesis.

Longitudinal and retrospective studies of individuals who have consciously experienced faith transitions between fundamentalism and liberalism.

Perhaps the most immediately beneficial study to triangulate the results of this thesis and to test and refine its theory would be a longitudinal study or retrospective study of individuals who have consciously changed (developed) from or to fundamentalism. There is a significant body of such stories recorded in existing literature. Authors such as Babinski, Spong, Cameron, and Winell have given their own accounts of change and recorded the accounts of others. However, these records have never been compiled or explored through the structural developmental discourse. An analysis of these existing accounts in literature and further gathering of primary data would greatly focus the insight of the broad theoretic model proposed herein.

Further study into the recapitulation of earlier faith stages.

An intriguing contention of Fowler's structural developmental model is that latter stages of development tend to 'recapitulate previous faith stages' (1981:289). This process of recapitulation finds expression in several testimonies recorded in Babinski's Leaving the Fold (1995). This reworking of previous stages is an important part of successful development in terms of finding equilibrium in successive stages. Psychologist Marlene Winell shares the stories of many ex-

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fundamentalists seeking equilibrium through recapitulation in Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion (1993). Again the analysis of such stories though the structural developmental discourse would serve to test and refine its theoretical base.

Case studies into the devolution of ethos in faith based schools.

Closely related to the concept of worldview and helpful in the context of schooling is the concept of ethos. This was touched upon in the chapter on Christian Schooling. Extensive research in the has developed some powerful models of ethos. Case studies of school's master stories and their methods of devolution through formal and hidden curriculum would add valuable definition to the element of schooled social-transmission in structural developmental theory. Specifically the notion of ethos as a reflection of institutionalised stages would be a worthwhile focus.

Psycho-linguistic analysis of structural development between literal and symbolic understandings.

A purer psycho-linguistic approach to the objective questions of this thesis is the last suggestion for further research of a far from all-inclusive list. Cupitt (1987) and Solskice (1985) use this approach effectively to explore religion in general. A more deliberate application to fundamentalism may serve to better define and exemplify the language / meta-language element of structural development. The literalising tendencies of Mythic-Literal stages and symbolic understandings of Individuative-Reflective, Conjunctive, and Universalising stages would provide valuable depth in the relationship between language and development in the context of belief.

These are but a few of innumerable ways of testing, refining, focussing, extending, and broadening the scope of this thesis.

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4.3 Conclusion

Often a thesis raises more questions than it provides answers. The former may be said to be as much a part of research as the latter. At the end of the process of putting several years of work and experience into words, it is necessary to step back and reflect. The paradoxical question for the developmentalist is, "will you still believe what you write now after another decade of your own development?". At the completion of this thesis some five years from its conception I can look back and confirm its premise: that the ontogenetic structures of development exist, and that they manifest themselves in phylogenetic systems of belief. I affirm the importance of the implications of this premise for a developmentally sensitive education, specifically in context of Christianity, faith, and fundamentalism.

At the same time, hindsight brings the ever-increasing awareness of the subjectivity of the researcher. This is not to discard the ability to speak meaningfully and objectively about anything, rather it is to be more aware of the function of language as a lens. I also have respect for the discourses that compete with structural developmentalism. I see such discourses as being generated from different emphases rather than as contradictory.

No thesis is ever a closed book. Metaphorically speaking, it is itself a chapter, perhaps a page or a word, in the perennial quest to model and communicate experience. It draws from, and contributes to, a cumulative experience. For some, it will inevitably serve to clarify what they disbelieve. For others, it will solidify what they do believe. One thing (though hopefully more) is certain; that on reaching the end of such a qualitative thesis there is the sobering and humbling awareness that "the more one knows, the more one knows one's ignorance".

To end where I began, I reaffirm the descriptive power of structural developmental psychology while recognising that it provides only a partial vision of the proverbial elephant. It will no doubt be absorbed into a mega-discourse

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of the future that "explains more variables, accounts for more contingencies, and solves more problems than the one it will ultimately replace" (Beck, 1999:2- 3).

At the conception of this thesis, I was confident of the ability of the structural developmental discourse to absorb other existing discourses. My confidence remains, but with a concession - that the variables, contingencies, and problems of this thesis's discourse will cause it to be (in developmental terms) – assimilated and accommodated.

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Appignanesi, R. & Zarate, O. (1992). Freud for beginners. Cambridge, UK: Icon Books Ltd.

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